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Beef Collops Fried

Thin slices of beef fried with salt, pepper, flour, and optional curry, pickles, tomato, or vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Collops Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the steak into thin pieces, about two inches square, and remove any sinews.

Cook

  1. Grease a frying pan and heat it well.

  2. Add the pieces of meat and cook quickly.

  3. While cooking, sprinkle salt, pepper, and a little flour over the meat.

  4. When nearly done, add your choice of flavoring: curry, pickles, tomato, or a little vinegar.

  5. Serve hot.

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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Steak
Provides the meat that is seared quickly in the pan, giving the collops their main texture.
Flour
Dusted over the meat during cooking to help it brown and lightly thicken the juices.

The step that matters

Cook quickly in a well-heated pan. Thin pieces of beef need a hot, greased pan so they brown on the outside before the inside overcooks and toughens. Slow cooking dries the meat and draws out moisture.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour. 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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