Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Beef Collops
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Cut the beef into thin slices, then divide them into pieces three inches long.
Beat the pieces with the blade of a knife and flour them.
Cook
Fry the floured beef in butter for three minutes.
Stew the beef in a pint of water or gravy, adding salt if using water.
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.
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together10,847 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
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Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10,677 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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
- Very tender beef
- Main protein that forms the body of the dish once sliced and cooked.
- Flour
- Coating that helps the beef brown in the butter and thickens the cooking liquid.
- Butter
- Frying fat that adds richness and helps the floured surface turn golden.
- Water or gravy
- Cooking liquid that stews the beef gently and forms the sauce.
The step that matters
Frying the floured beef in butter. The flour coating browns through the Maillard reaction, which needs moderate heat. If the pan is too hot, the butter and flour scorch before the beef is cooked through, leaving bitter flavour. If it is too cool, the beef steams and goes pale instead of forming a golden crust.
“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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