Skip to main content
Main

To Fry Collops

Thin slices of meat fried with butter, onions, ketchup, and a splash of hot water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,912 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

To Fry Collops

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pan, combine the sliced meat, butter, and sliced onions.

  2. Cover the pan and cook until the meat is sufficiently tender.

  3. Add a little hot water and ketchup to the pan.

  4. Stir to combine and cook until heated through.

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. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Meat + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

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

  4. Onion + ketchuptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + ketchuptop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it cooks gently under cover.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the meat cook gently and carry flavor.
Sliced onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften in the pan.
Ketchup
Adds acidity and sweetness, giving the sauce its tangy flavor.

The step that matters

Cover the pan and cook until the meat is sufficiently tender. Thin slices can dry out or toughen if cooked too hard or too long. Gentle covered cooking traps moisture and breaks down connective tissue, so the meat becomes tender while staying juicy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, ketchup):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, ketchup. 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.

You might also like

Meat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipesMeat CakesMeat Cakes35 recipes