Skip to main content
Main

Beef Collops

Thin slices of beef simmered in gravy with shallot, walnut, capers, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 the steak

  1. Cut the steak into thin pieces about 3 inches long.

  2. Beat the pieces with the blade of a knife and dredge with flour.

Cook and finish

  1. Heat the butter in a frying pan and fry the steak for about 3 minutes.

  2. Transfer the steak to a small saucepan and pour the gravy over it.

  3. Add a piece of butter kneaded with a little flour, along with seasoning and other ingredients.

  4. Simmer the mixture for 10 minutes without boiling.

  5. Serve in a hot 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. Walnut + caperstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together156 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + caperstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 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
Forms the main body of the dish, tender when cut thin and cooked briefly.
Butter
Fats the pan for frying and enriches the sauce with richness and flavour.
Flour (in the method)
Dusting on the steak and kneaded into butter to thicken the gravy sauce.
Gravy
Provides the liquid base of the sauce, adding savoury depth and moisture.
Pickled walnut
Adds a sharp, tangy, savoury note that cuts through the richness of the sauce.
Capers
Contribute a briny, acidic bite that balances the buttery, meaty flavours.

The step that matters

Simmer without boiling. Gentle simmering keeps the steak tender and lets the flour-thickened sauce smooth out; a rolling boil toughens meat proteins and can break the sauce.

Swap the walnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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.

More beef collops recipes

Minced 9Scotch 5Cold 3 See all 31 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes