Skip to main content
Main

Scotch Collops

Thin slices of beef cooked with butter, onion, flour, and water to make a savory sauce.

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

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 ↓

Scotch Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the beef into thin pieces.

Brown and thicken

  1. Melt butter in a pan and sauté chopped onion until golden.

  2. Add the beef slices and cook until browned.

  3. Sprinkle flour over the beef and stir well.

  4. Pour in water to create a sauce, and season with salt and pepper.

  5. Simmer until the beef is tender.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 protein; browning builds savoury flavour, and slow simmering makes it tender.
Butter
Adds fat for sautéing the onion and carries flavour through the pan.
Onion
Softens and turns golden, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce as it is stirred with the pan juices.

The step that matters

Browning the beef. Searing the slices until browned creates savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Crowding the pan or stirring too early makes the meat steam and go grey, losing that flavour.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes