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Collops, White. No. 3

A dish of sliced meat sautéed with butter, lemon, cream, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Collops, White. No. 3

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Season the collops with pepper and salt.

  2. Fry the collops in a little butter until pale.

  3. Squeeze in the lemon juice.

  4. Add the cream and egg yolks, tossing quickly.

  5. Serve hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the cream into a smooth, silky sauce when tossed in quickly.
Cream
Forms the body of the sauce and gives it a rich, mellow texture.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream and balances its richness.
Collops (sliced meat)
Main protein; frying in butter until pale gives it a light browning and flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and egg yolks, tossing quickly. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can scramble and curdle if overheated or left too long over direct heat. Tossing quickly and keeping the heat gentle lets the sauce thicken smoothly while the yolks stay silky.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, butter, cream, egg):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Avocadofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, butter, cream, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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