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Veal Collops

Veal collops are veal pieces simmered with onions, mace, salt, pepper, and lemon or catsup, served with a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Veal Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Dust the veal pieces with flour.

  2. In a skillet, fry the veal in butter until browned.

Stew

  1. Add enough water to cover the veal and bring to a boil.

  2. Skim off any scum that rises to the surface.

  3. Add the chopped onions, mace, salt, and pepper.

  4. Stew until the veal is tender.

  5. Remove the meat.

Finish the gravy and serve

  1. Thicken the gravy with a mixture of flour and water.

  2. Stir in the lemon juice or catsup.

  3. Pour the gravy over the veal and garnish with lemon slices.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Leg of veal
Is the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing.
Flour
Dusting helps the veal brown, and flour and water thicken the gravy.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the surface of the veal and adds flavor.
Onions
Softened during stewing, they add sweetness and body to the gravy.
Lemon juice or catsup
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savory gravy.

The step that matters

Skim off the scum after boiling. Scum that rises during the initial boil contains impurities and proteins that would cloud and muddy the gravy if left in.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, flour, butter, onion, pepper, lemon. 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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