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Minced Collops Au Naturel

A dish of finely chopped beef seasoned with pepper and salt, sautéed with butter, onion, mushroom ketchup, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Minced Collops Au Naturel

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a chafing dish, combine the chopped beef with pepper and salt before heating.

  2. Stir constantly until the beef is very hot to prevent lumps.

  3. Sauté the beef in its own juices for about 10 minutes.

  4. Add the butter, minced onion, mushroom ketchup, and flour mixed with a little butter to form a smooth paste.

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 + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main body of the dish, and its own juices cook it gently in the pan.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour through the sauce.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury depth as it softens.
Flour
Thickens the juices into a smooth, lightly bound sauce.

The step that matters

Stir constantly until the beef is very hot. Constant stirring keeps the finely chopped meat moving so it heats evenly and does not clump. Clumps form when proteins set in place, and flour mixed in later can then stay in lumps instead of blending smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, butter, mushroom, ketchup, 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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