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Beef Collofs

Beef Collops are stewed rump steak pieces cooked with gravy, butter, flour, and seasoned with pepper, salt, pickled cucumbers, capers, walnut, onion, and lemon garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 303 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef Collofs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the rump steak into larger pieces resembling Scotch collops.

  2. Hack the pieces slightly with a knife.

  3. Flour the pieces.

Make the collops

  1. Melt butter in a stewpan.

  2. Fry the collops quickly for about 2 minutes.

  3. Add gravy.

  4. Add a bit of butter rolled in flour.

  5. Season with pepper and salt.

  6. Slice the pickled cucumbers.

  7. Chop the capers, walnut, and onion finely.

  8. Stew everything together for about 5 minutes.

  9. Serve hot, garnished with lemon.

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. Cucumber + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cucumber + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 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

Rump steak
Forms the meat of the dish, becoming tender when briefly fried and then stewed.
Flour
Coats the beef and thickens the gravy, giving the sauce body.
Gravy
Provides the liquid that forms the sauce and keeps the meat moist while stewing.
Butter
Adds richness and helps brown the beef when fried.
Pickled cucumbers
Adds sharp acidity that cuts through the richness of the meat and sauce.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and sweetness as it softens in the sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the collops quickly for about 2 minutes. Searing the floured beef briefly browns its surface and builds flavour, while overcooking at this stage toughens the meat before the stewing step.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper, cucumber, capers, walnut, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, cucumber, capers, walnut, lemon. 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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