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Minced Collops

A stew of minced steak with shallot, onion, butter, stock, mushroom ketchup, herbs, served hot with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Minced Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the collops

  1. Brown the shallot and onion in butter in a stewpan, without letting them color too much.

  2. Add the minced steak to the browned onion.

  3. Pour in the stock and add the mushroom ketchup or minced mushrooms, along with the tied herbs. Season with salt and pepper and bring to a boil.

  4. Simmer gently for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with toasted bread slices 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Fillet or rump steak
Forms the meat base of the dish, cooked gently in the stock until tender.
Butter
Carries the flavor of the browned onion and adds richness to the sauce.
Shallot and onion
Provide sweetness and savory depth once softly browned in butter.
Stock
Adds liquid and savory body, turning the meat into a moist, spoonable mixture.
Mushroom ketchup or button mushrooms
Adds deep savory, umami flavor to the meat and stock.

The step that matters

Brown the shallot and onion gently. Onions turn bitter and dark if browned too hard, and over-browning spoils the mild, sweet flavor the sauce depends on. Cook them only until softened and lightly colored.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, butter, mushroom, parsley, thyme, pepper):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, butter, mushroom, parsley, thyme, pepper. 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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