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Scotch, or Scorched, Collops

Beef collops browned and simmered in a sauce of gravy, lemon, anchovy, morels, ketchup, and lemon pickle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 479 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Scotch, or Scorched, Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the collops

  1. Heat a frying pan and add browned butter.

  2. Fry the collops over high heat until nicely browned, shaking and turning them frequently.

  3. Remove the collops and place them in a pot.

  4. Add more cold butter to the pan and fry the collops again until properly browned.

Make the gravy

  1. Pour the cooking liquid into a stewpan and add gravy, lemon juice, anchovy, morels, browning, ketchup, and lemon pickle.

  2. Season with salt and Cayenne pepper, then thicken with butter and flour.

  3. Let it boil for 5-6 minutes, then add the collops and shake over the heat without boiling.

  4. Once simmered, remove the collops and place them on a serving dish.

Serve

  1. Strain the gravy and pour it hot over the collops.

  2. Garnish with foacemeat balls, curled bacon slices, mushrooms, barberries, and lemon.

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. Anchovy + ketchuptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Beef + anchovytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together451 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

Beef collops
Provide the meat that is browned and then gently simmered in the sauce.
Butter
Browns the collops through frying and, with flour, thickens the gravy.
Gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that the collops simmer in.
Morels
Add an earthy, aromatic flavour to the gravy.
Lemon pickle
Adds sharp, acidic flavour that balances the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Shaking the collops without boiling them. Once the collops are added to the gravy, boiling toughens the meat proteins and makes them tough and dry, so the gravy should only simmer gently while they are shaken over the heat.

“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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