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To Make Minced Collops

Minced collops are finely minced meat cooked with stock, sugar, salt, pepper, and flour, served with diced toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Make Minced Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Remove the bone, skin, and hard pieces from the steak.

  2. Simmer the trimmings with onions in water for 2–3 hours to make stock.

Make the collops

  1. Cut the steak into small pieces and mince finely in a wooden bowl.

  2. Place the minced meat in a saucepan without water and cook over heat, beating with a pounder until set (about 7–10 minutes).

  3. Strain the stock and add it to the meat along with sugar, salt, pepper, and flour.

  4. Simmer for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve with diced toast arranged around the dish.

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

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

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + peppertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 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

Steak
Provides the meat that is minced and cooked into the dish's main body.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aroma to the stock that flavors the meat.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the mince becomes a looser, saucy texture.

The step that matters

Beating the minced meat while it sets. Cooking the mince without water and beating it as it sets gives a firm, even texture; stopping too early leaves it wet and crumbly, while overcooking makes it tough and dry.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper, flour. 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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