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Beef Collops

Beef collops are thin slices of beef simmered in gravy with butter, flour, shallot, pickled walnut, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 405 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the rump steak into small pieces.

  2. Heat a frying pan and brown the steak pieces for 2-3 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Transfer the browned steak to a stewpan and add the gravy.

  2. In a bowl, rub the butter into the flour and add to the gravy.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, shallot, pickled walnut, and capers.

  4. Let the mixture simmer for about 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot in a covered 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. Shallot + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Shallot + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

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

  3. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Walnut + caperstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together156 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Rump steak
Provides the tender meat that makes up the body of the dish.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and adds a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Combined with butter, it thickens the gravy into a smooth sauce.
Gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying the flavour of the dish.
Capers
Add a sharp, acidic bite that cuts through the richness of the sauce.
Pickled walnut
Adds a tangy, acidic flavour that contrasts with the savoury meat.

The step that matters

Rubbing butter into flour before adding to the gravy. Adding flour directly to hot liquid can form lumps, because starch granules clump before they hydrate. Coating the flour in fat first helps it disperse evenly, giving a smooth, well-thickened sauce.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, shallot, capers. 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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