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- Feb 8, 2017
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Hi friends!
In an effort to post more period recipes, I stumbled across the receipt for an interesting dish I'd never heard of before – collops. According to an article from www.cooksinfo.com:
At various times since the 1500s, 'Collop' in English has been used to mean either thick slices of meat -- or thin slices of meat. In any event, it has generally meant smallish slices, as opposed to huge slabs.
In the 1500s, it meant primarily a rasher (a slice) of bacon. During these Elizabethan times, sugar was extremely expensive; a huge luxury. Hosts would want to show off various sugar creations. One of the favourite food items to amaze guests with were "collops of bacon", made from ground almonds and sugar. Later, the word came to be applied to other types of meat, and now can be beef, lamb, mutton, pork, veal or venison.
At a later point, Collop even became confused with the verb to "scollop" ("scallop"), which might lead you to ponder a connection with the name of scalloped potatoes, which are sliced. Hannah Glasse (1708-1770) in "The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy" (1747) lists a recipe for "Collups of Oysters", which is oysters cooked in scallop shells. This may show the start of the confusion between the word "scollops" (as it was then spelt) and "collops."
http://www.cooksinfo.com/collops
The first recipe I came across for collops was in an 1832 cookbook, The Cook's Own Book: Being A Complete Culinary Encyclopedia , and is as follows:
Cut some veal cutlets; fry them a good brown, but not too much; take some good gravy, thicken it with a little flour, boil it a few minutes; add Cayenne, catchup, truffles, morels, salt, mushrooms pickled, grated lemon-peel; simmer this up, just heat the collops through, add what gravy came from them, but do not let them boil, or they will be hard; add forcemeat balls, hard yolk of eggs; lay round little slices of bacon, notched and toasted, and sliced lemon. (p. 54)
http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/cookbooks/html/books/book_08.cfm
This didn't sound too bad to me overall, although I had no clue what "forcemeat" was (it's not too far removed from sausage or even a pâté in consistency). I found a slightly different take on this in Civil War Recipes: Receipts from the Pages of Godey's Lady's Book:
Cut the inside of a sirloin, or any other convenient piece, into small circular shapes, flour and fry them, sprinkle with pepper, salt, chopped parsley, and shallot; make a little gravy in the pan; send to table with gherkin or tomato sauce.
-or; cut thin slices of beef from the rump or any other tender part, and divide them into pieces three inches long; beat them with the blade of a knife, and flour them. Fry the collops in butter two minutes; then lay them into a small stewpan, and cover them with a pint of gravy; add a bit of butter rubbed in flour.
https://books.google.com/books?id=0...#v=onepage&q=collops in the civil war&f=false
I'm also going to post my version of this interesting, versatile recipe in another thread, but trying out the period versions could be tasty as well. Enjoy!
In an effort to post more period recipes, I stumbled across the receipt for an interesting dish I'd never heard of before – collops. According to an article from www.cooksinfo.com:
At various times since the 1500s, 'Collop' in English has been used to mean either thick slices of meat -- or thin slices of meat. In any event, it has generally meant smallish slices, as opposed to huge slabs.
In the 1500s, it meant primarily a rasher (a slice) of bacon. During these Elizabethan times, sugar was extremely expensive; a huge luxury. Hosts would want to show off various sugar creations. One of the favourite food items to amaze guests with were "collops of bacon", made from ground almonds and sugar. Later, the word came to be applied to other types of meat, and now can be beef, lamb, mutton, pork, veal or venison.
At a later point, Collop even became confused with the verb to "scollop" ("scallop"), which might lead you to ponder a connection with the name of scalloped potatoes, which are sliced. Hannah Glasse (1708-1770) in "The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy" (1747) lists a recipe for "Collups of Oysters", which is oysters cooked in scallop shells. This may show the start of the confusion between the word "scollops" (as it was then spelt) and "collops."
http://www.cooksinfo.com/collops
The first recipe I came across for collops was in an 1832 cookbook, The Cook's Own Book: Being A Complete Culinary Encyclopedia , and is as follows:
Cut some veal cutlets; fry them a good brown, but not too much; take some good gravy, thicken it with a little flour, boil it a few minutes; add Cayenne, catchup, truffles, morels, salt, mushrooms pickled, grated lemon-peel; simmer this up, just heat the collops through, add what gravy came from them, but do not let them boil, or they will be hard; add forcemeat balls, hard yolk of eggs; lay round little slices of bacon, notched and toasted, and sliced lemon. (p. 54)
http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/cookbooks/html/books/book_08.cfm
This didn't sound too bad to me overall, although I had no clue what "forcemeat" was (it's not too far removed from sausage or even a pâté in consistency). I found a slightly different take on this in Civil War Recipes: Receipts from the Pages of Godey's Lady's Book:
Cut the inside of a sirloin, or any other convenient piece, into small circular shapes, flour and fry them, sprinkle with pepper, salt, chopped parsley, and shallot; make a little gravy in the pan; send to table with gherkin or tomato sauce.
-or; cut thin slices of beef from the rump or any other tender part, and divide them into pieces three inches long; beat them with the blade of a knife, and flour them. Fry the collops in butter two minutes; then lay them into a small stewpan, and cover them with a pint of gravy; add a bit of butter rubbed in flour.
https://books.google.com/books?id=0...#v=onepage&q=collops in the civil war&f=false
I'm also going to post my version of this interesting, versatile recipe in another thread, but trying out the period versions could be tasty as well. Enjoy!
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