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Mince Collops

A pan‑cooked minced beef dish with onions, flour, ketchup, and toast garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mince Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the collops

  1. Melt the butter or dripping in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the minced beef and cook, stirring with a fork or wooden spoon until browned but not hard.

  3. Mix the flour with the cold water until smooth, then add to the pan.

  4. Stir in the chopped onions and simmer for 1 hour, stirring frequently to prevent lumps.

  5. About 15 minutes before serving, add the salt, pepper, and ketchup.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, garnished with small pieces of toast.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour 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

Beef
Provides the main body and savoury meaty flavour of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce as it simmers.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften during the long simmer.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness, acidity and depth to the savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and water. Flour mixed with cold water first disperses evenly, so it thickens without lumps when it meets the hot pan. Stirring frequently during the simmer keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, flour, pepper, ketchup):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, flour, pepper, ketchup. 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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