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To Make Minced Collops

A dish of finely minced beef cooked with stock, sugar, salt, pepper, flour, and served with diced toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

To Make Minced Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef and 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.

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

Cook the collops

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Round beef steak
Provides the meat that is minced and cooked into the collops.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma to the stock.
Flour
Thickens the stock and sauce, giving the collops body.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness that balances the savoury beef and onion flavour.

The step that matters

Beating the minced meat until set. Cooking the mince without water while beating it breaks it up and drives off moisture, so it sets into a firm, even texture instead of stewing into a grey, wet mass. Stopping too early leaves it loose; cooking too long makes it tough and dry.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, 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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