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Savoury Minced Collops

Savory minced collops are a pan‑cooked minced steak mixture seasoned with herbs, salt, pepper, and optional onions, finished with catsup or vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Savoury Minced Collops

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Savoury Minced Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and mix in the flour to create a thickening.

  2. Cook until it begins to brown, then add the parsley, salt, and pepper.

  3. Stir over gentle heat until the mixture is a deep yellow‑brown.

Cook the collops

  1. Add the minced steak and separate it with a fork until heated through.

  2. Gradually pour in the boiling water and stew gently for 10 minutes.

  3. Before serving, stir in catsup, chili vinegar, or lemon juice, and optional minced onion or garlic.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Melts to form the fat base that carries the flour and seasonings.
Flour
Thickens the butter into a roux that gives the sauce body as it browns.
Rump steak
Provides the meat, which cooks through and softens in the gently stewed liquid.
Boiling water
Loosens the roux into a savory sauce that the meat stews in.

The step that matters

Stir the roux over gentle heat. Flour browns quickly once fat is hot. Gentle heat lets it take on a deep yellow-brown colour and nutty flavour without scorching, which gives the sauce its character and colour. Scorched flour turns bitter.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, parsley, pepper, vinegar):

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

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