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Minced Collops

A minced beef and suet mixture cooked with butter, flour, water or gravy, seasoned with pepper, salt, ketchup, and optional onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Minced Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the beef and suet very fine, removing any gristle or skin.

  2. Melt butter in a frying pan over medium heat.

Cook

  1. Add the minced meat to the pan and stir well.

  2. If desired, add chopped onion with the meat.

  3. Sprinkle in a little flour and add hot water or gravy.

  4. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and ketchup.

  5. Cook for about 10 minutes until done.

Serve

  1. Serve in a hash 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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

  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 + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Beef
Provides the main meat flavour and body of the dish.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the minced meat moist and rich while cooking.
Flour
Lightly thickens the pan juices so they cling to the meat.
Butter
Adds fat for frying and a rich, savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Add the flour and liquid to the cooked meat. Flour sprinkled over meat and then mixed with hot liquid thickens the juices smoothly; adding it cold or in one lump can leave clumps and a thin, uneven sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

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