Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Scotch Collops, Brown
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the collops
Season the veal collops with salt and pepper.
Fry the collops in clarified butter until browned.
Make the sauce
Brown the flour with butter.
Add gravy, mushrooms, morels, truffles, and forcemeat balls.
Squeeze in lemon juice.
Let the mixture boil until thickened.
Finish and serve
Add the collops to the sauce.
Toss quickly.
Serve.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together27,047 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,900 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
-
Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,525 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
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Veal + truffletop 11% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together815 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
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Butter + truffletop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,209 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Veal fillet
- Provides the tender meat that is the base of the dish.
- Flour
- Browned in butter and thickens the gravy into a smooth sauce.
- Gravy
- Supplies the liquid and savoury body of the sauce.
- Mushrooms
- Add earthy flavour and a soft, meaty texture to the sauce.
- Morels
- Add a deep, woodsy aroma and chewy texture to the sauce.
- Truffles
- Add a strong, aromatic earthy flavour to the sauce.
The step that matters
Brown the flour with butter. Cooking flour in fat until it turns nutty brown develops flavour and colour and removes raw starch taste. Stopping too early leaves a pale, pasty sauce, while burning gives bitterness.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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