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Collops, Beef, with Onions

Beef collops cooked with onions, butter, and ketchup, simmered in boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Collops, Beef, with Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the beef collops as in the previous recipe.

  2. Dredge the collops in flour.

Cook

  1. In a frying pan, heat the butter, lard, or dripping and add the collops and onions.

  2. Season with pepper and brown the collops.

  3. Cover the pan closely and cook for 20 to 30 minutes until the onions are tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the meat and place it on a hot dish.

  2. Add boiling water and ketchup to the onions, boil, and pour the sauce around the meat.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Beef collops
The main meat, which is browned and then cooked until tender in the covered pan.
Onions
Soften during covered cooking and, with the boiled liquid, form the sauce around the meat.
Flour
Dredged over the collops to help them brown and to thicken the sauce.
Butter, lard, or dripping
Fat for frying that browns the collops and carries flavour into the onions.

The step that matters

Brown the collops before covering the pan. Browning creates flavour through the Maillard reaction. If the collops are crowded or the pan is too cool, they steam instead of browning, and the sauce tastes flat.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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

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