I really need to create a section of my blog titled, “Recipes I make because they have a cool title.”

I found this gem while flipping through Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Cookery and Household Management, published in 1861. And I stopped simply because of the title. I imagined little men in kilts, eating scallops.

Silly me! Collops and scallops are not the same things. The word collop, according to Mrs. Beeton, is said to be derived from the word escalope, meaning slice. It was also used as an everyday term for veal, so it’s possible that the dish was intended to be made with veal. But the version printing in Mrs. Beeton’s book called for steak. I had two sirloins in the freezer. Thus, a dinner is born.

Ingredients
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 2 sirloin steaks or rump steaks, cut into thin slices
• ½ cup flour
• Salt and pepper and spices to taste
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 1 cup beef stock
• 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

Instructions
Melt the butter in a saucepan. In a plastic bag, combine the flour, salt, pepper and any spices you wish to use. Add the steak and shake until meat is coated.

Add coated meat to pan and brown on all sides. Remove from pan with slotted spoon and drain on paper towel.

Add the onion and cook until onion is translucent.

Add the stock and Worcestershire sauce. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and add the meat back in. Cover and let simmer gently for 10 minutes or until meat is just cooked, but not tough.

The recipe says “garnish with sippets”, which are toast triangles. The dish seemed kind of hearty so I took bagels, buttered the halves, cut them into triangles, and toasted them on a cookie sheet in a 400 degree oven for about 7 minutes.

I’m lucky in that my girls like steak and they really enjoyed this dish. It has a bit more depth than plain stir fried steak and onions. I hope you enjoy it!

 

 

In this recipe, E. Smith instructed the cook to “hack” thin slices of veal fillets and, after seasoning them, to “lay them in a pewter dish . . . and let them lie till you want them.” By using the term hack in her directions, Smith was describing scotching, which, Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language defines as “cut with shallow incisions.” The cubed steaks we know today can be considered a modern version of the scotched meat of the eighteenth century.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word collop is of obscure derivation, perhaps connected with coal. In early Britain, the term meant a rasher of bacon that was to be fried, generally with eggs, but later it came to mean just a slice of meat. Hannah Glasse’s Scotch Collops recipe illustrates this development in the meaning of the word. Although collop seems to have become confused with scallop, there is no association between the two. Johnson’s dictionary defined it as a “rasher boiled upon the coals.”

This recipe is a modern adaptation of the 18th-century original. It was created by culinary historian Nancy Carter Crump for the book Dining with the Washingtons.

 

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 to 3 pounds veal scaloppini
• Salt
• Ground white pepper
• 6 to 8 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 1/2 teaspoons freshly grated lemon zest
• 3 large egg yolks, lightly beaten
• All-purpose flour, as needed
• 2 cups chicken broth
• About 4 ounces white button mushrooms, sliced (about 1 cup)
• 2 oranges

Directions

 

1. Lightly season the scaloppini with salt and pepper.
2. Melt 3 tablespoons of the butter and combine with the nutmeg, lemon zest, and 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of the salt. Mix with the egg yolks, stirring together until well mixed.
3. Dip the scaloppini in the mixture, coating both sides, and then dredge both sides in flour. Put the scaloppini on waxed paper, and leave it to set at room temperature for 10 to 15 minutes.
4. Melt another 2 tablespoons of the butter in a large sauté pan. Add the scaloppini, and cook until browned on both sides — 2 to 3 minutes per side — adding another 1 or 2 tablespoons of butter, if necessary. Remove the scaloppini from the pan, cover loosely with aluminum foil, and set aside to keep warm.
5. Sprinkle about 1 1/2 tablespoons of flour in the sauté pan, stirring up any browned bits on the bottom of the pan. Stir in the chicken broth, and bring to a boil. Add the mushrooms and cook for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently.
6. Return the scaloppini to the pan, turning to coat on both sides with the sauce. Cover and continue to cook until the scaloppini and mushrooms are cooked through.
7. To serve, place the scaloppini and mushrooms on a platter and surround with the sauce. Squeeze the juice of 1 of the oranges over the scaloppini. Cut the second orange into quarters or slices, and set around the platter to garnish. Serve hot.

 

Minced Collops

 

Minced beef with onion and seasonings. The word ‘collop’, in use from at least the 14th to the late 19th Centuries refers to a cut piece of meat, ready for cooking as the modern ‘steak’ or ‘rasher’. The use, in these two receipts, to indicate a very finely cut, or minced, meat, is unusual and seems to occur only in Northern England and the Borders.

 

 

 

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Original Receipt in ‘English Housewifry‘ by Elizabeth Moxon, 1764

454. To make MINC’D COLLOPS.
Take two or three pounds of any tender parts of beef, (according as you would have the dish in bigness) cut it small as you would do minc’d veal; take an onion, shred it small, and fry it a light brown, in butter seasoned with nutmeg, pepper and salt, and put it into your pan with your onion, and fry it a little whilst it be a light brown; then put to it a jill of good gravy, and a spoonful of walnut pickle, or a little catchup; put in a few shred capers or mushrooms, thicken it up with a little flour and butter; if you please you may put in a little juice of lemon; when you dish it up, garnish your dish with pickle; and a few forc’d-meat-balls.
It is proper for either side-dish or top-dish.

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Original Receipt from ‘Lancashire Evening Post‘ – Wednesday 23 October 1935

MINCED COLLOPS

Required; 1 lb minced fresh beef, one very small onion, salt and pepper, some white stock, a dessertspoonful of oatmeal.

Bring a little good dripping to boiling point, and put in the onion, finely minced. Cook for a minute or two, but do not let it get too brown. Put in the meat and beat until all the lumps Into which it may form are smooth; then add the stock, and the salt and pepper, cover and simmer very gently for about an hour, stirring it now and then. Then put in the oatmeal (to thicken it) and cook until you judge that this is done. Many people use water instead of stock, because the meat makes its own stock as it cooks. In Scotland this is always served with a border of boiled rice, and oatmeal Is not Inevitable. You can omit it if you like. The rice, when ready, should be rather grainy and dry.

 

 

 

 

 

Mutton Collops

 

 

Beef Collops | Easy Shrovetide Dish

 

 

Beef Collops – a simple dish but laden with history and tradition linked to Shrovetide viz. the days preceding the Lenten season which begins on Ash Wednesday. This is a dish cooked on Shrove Monday and consists of thinly sliced beef simmered in a beef-stock and wine based sauce, served with fried bread to mop up all the yummy sauce. Before going into the details of this recipe, let us first delve into the history and tradition behind this dish.

The History and tradition of Shrovetide

Shrovetide is the pre-lenten season and is the Christian period of preparation before the beginning of the liturgical season of Lent. It commences on the 9^th Sunday before Easter (3^rd before Ash Wednesday) known as Septuagesima Sunday and includes Sexagesima Sunday (the 2^nd Sunday before Ash Wednesday), Quinquagesima Sunday commonly called Shrove Sunday (the last Sunday of Shrovetide), as well as Shrove Monday, and culminates on Shrove Tuesday.

The word Shrove, derived from shrive, refers to the preparation for the Lenten season by the confession of sins. People would use this period which culminates on Shrove Tuesday, to prepare themselves for the Lenten season, which is the season of reflection and preparation before the Easter celebrations. As time has passed, Shrove Tuesday has transformed from being just a day of self examination and introspection, to a festive day with the character of Carnival and celebrated in a lot of places.

What is Fasching?

Fasching is Germany’s Carnival season which begins on the 11th day of the 11 month of the year at precisely 11 hours and 11 minutes viz. 11th November 11:11 AM and ends at the stroke of midnight on Shrove Tuesday. Fasching (Karneval) is a time of festivity and merry-making – it was a way to break the rules and poke fun at the rule-makers. In the olden days, during the Karneval period, the common folks took the chance of mocking the politicians and high placed people. To avoid persecution, all this took place behind masks to avoid identification. The days and nights were full of parades, masquerade balls, skits and other festivities.

The Karneval/ Carnival has now become an annual festivity around the world, with the most famous ones taking place at Rio de Janeiro, Köln (Cologne), Nice, Trinidad and New Orleans. While the Carnival in Rio de Janeiro is regarded as the craziest of them all, Germany is by far the most enthusiastic Karneval center in Europe. You must already be wondering that although I started off with the word Fasching, I’m now using Karneval. This is because the Carnival is a regional festival in Germany and celebrated in different ways based on the regional traditions and also known by different names:

Karneval – in the Rheinland (Rhineland) region

Fastnacht – around Mainz

Fosnat – the Franken region ( northern Bavaria)

Fasnet – Schwabia / Swabia region (South-west Germany) and South-west Bavaria

Fasching – around München (Munich) and in Austria

The word Fasching is derived from the German word vaschanc or vaschang, meaning” the last serving of alcoholic bevarages before lent”. Karneval is borrowed from French and Italian and probably comes from the Latin word carne levare, meaning “away with the meat”. Fastnacht is based on the old German word fasen meaning “to be foolish, silly and wild”

Following are the days of the Karneval/ fasching leading up to Ash wednesday:

Fettdonnerstag – Fat Thursday, also known as Weiberfastnacht (Women’s Carnival)

Rußiger Freitag – Sooty Friday

Nelkensamstag – Carnation Saturday, also known as Schmalziger Samstag (Greasy Saturday)

Tulpensonntag – Tulip Sunday

Rosenmontag – Rose Monday

Fasnachtsdienstag – Shrove Tuesday, also known as Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) or Veilchendienstag (Violet Tuesday)

Every year on Rosenmontag, the Karneval at Cologne records a 1.5million footfall. However this year due to Covid-19 the Karneval stands cancelled.

The History of Beef Collops

Let us now comeback to the main topic – the Beef Collops. Along with the spiritual preparation and the Carnival, there is also Culinary tradition linked to the days preceding Ash Wednesday. Rich ingredients like meat, eggs, butter and milk were forbidden during the Lenten period and so to prevent wastage of these ingredients, people would use them up in the days before Ash Wednesday.

Shrove Tuesday is also known as Pancake day or Pancake Tuesday, especially in the Commonwealth countries, and this is a well known fact. Shrove Tuesday was the last day for consuming the rich ingredients and in UK, traditionally milk, butter and eggs ended up in a pancake batter. Other regions around Europe cook up similar rich dishes. In Germany, in the days leading to ash Wednesday, the bakeries would be stocked up with a kind of German doughnut known as Berliner or Krapfen (in Bavaria).

But what most people are not aware of anymore and, which has been forgotten in the sands of time is Collop Monday. Collop Monday was the last day before Lent, allowed for consumption of meat. The word Collop refers to thin slices of meat. The word is thought to have been derived from the Swedish word Kalops or French word Escalopes, both words meaning slices of meat. Collops were enjoyed for breakfast on Collop Monday along with fried eggs/ butter-fried bread. The fresh meat that was leftover was cut into thin slices, salted and preserved to be consumed after the Lenten period.

Traditional Collops was a dish consisting of thick slices of bacon fried and served with fried eggs. The fat from the bacon was used to fry the pancakes, the next day! As time passed, bacon was replaced by other meats, the most popular being Venison Collops. The scots have their own version of this dish called Scotch Collops which are patties of minced meat and not sliced meat.

The Process of making Beef Collops

I decided to try making collops using Beef. This Beef Collops recipe works best with a lean cut of beef – Fillet is best. Cut it up into thin slices or get it done by your butcher. Tenderize the meat if you think it is necessary. Heat some butter in a frying pan and fry some onions and garlic. Add some flour to this to form the base for the sauce.

Follow this with beef-stock and wine. I used red wine but you can use white wine if you so desire. Season the sauce with salt and pepper. finally add the beef and simmer it for about 15-20 mins. The cooking time is based on the cut of meat you choose. If it is lean and tenderized well, it will cook quickly. Serve the Beef Collops with slices of bread fried in butter.