Name: Veal Cutlets, or Collops, a LA Française.
Ingredients: 2 lbs veal, cut into small, thin, round collops; 1 teaspoon fine salt; ¼ teaspoon white pepper; ¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg; 2 oz good butter; Espagnole sauce or gravy; Juice of ½ lemon; Cayenne pepper, to taste

Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Veal Cutlets, or Collops, a LA Française.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Arrange the veal collops evenly in a sauté pan.
Sprinkle salt, white pepper, and nutmeg over the meat.
Melt the butter in a clean saucepan over low heat and pour it over the veal.
Set the pan aside until ready to cook.

Cook and serve

Fry the collops over medium heat for 4 to 5 minutes until lightly browned.
Transfer the collops to a hot dish and sauce with Espagnole or a quick gravy flavored with lemon juice and cayenne.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,375 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Veal: Provides the tender meat that is cooked briefly and sliced into thin collops.
Butter: Carries flavour and promotes light browning of the veal surface during frying.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich Espagnole or gravy sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the collops over medium heat. Thin veal cooks quickly, so frying only until lightly browned keeps it tender. Overcooking toughens the proteins and dries the meat, while too low a heat fails to brown the surface.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, nutmeg, butter, sauce, lemon, pepper):

Parsleyfits better
Marjoramfits better
Sagefits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, nutmeg, butter, sauce, lemon, pepper. 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.

Lemon Sauce236 recipes

Veal Patties50 recipes

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Tomato Soup526 recipes

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Veal Cutlets, or Collops, a LA Française.