Skip to main content
Main

Minced Collops

A pan‑cooked minced meat dish simmered with onion, flour, and water, optionally flavored with mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,626 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Minced Collops

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat a pan and rub a little fat over the bottom.

  2. Add the minced meat and chopped onion, stirring until each piece is separate.

Cook

  1. Blend the flour with the water and add to the pan.

  2. Simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. If desired, stir in mushroom ketchup before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve with toast or hard-boiled eggs.

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 + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Meat + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,423 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Mushroom + ketchuptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Meat + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Minced meat
Forms the main body of the dish and provides savoury meaty flavour as it browns.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light gravy as it simmers with the water.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it softens in the pan.

The step that matters

Stirring the meat until each piece is separate. If the mince is left in clumps, it steams unevenly and stays grey and lumpy. Stirring as it cooks breaks it up so the pieces brown and cook evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, flour, mushroom, ketchup):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, flour, mushroom, 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.

More minced collops recipes

Savory 3 See all 35 →

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipes