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Beef Coblops

Beef Cobloops is a dish of thinly sliced steak cooked with butter, gravy, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 405 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef Coblops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steak

  1. Cut the steak into thin pieces about 3 inches long.

  2. Beat the pieces with the blade of a knife.

  3. Dredge the pieces with flour.

Fry and simmer

  1. Heat the butter in a frying pan.

  2. Fry the steak pieces for about 3 minutes.

  3. Transfer the steak to a small saucepan.

  4. Pour the gravy over the steak.

  5. Add a piece of butter kneaded with a little flour, along with salt, pepper, shallot, pickled walnut, and capers.

  6. Simmer the mixture for 10 minutes without boiling.

  7. 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. Shallot + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Shallot + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

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

  3. Walnut + caperstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together156 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + caperstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Rump steak
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender when beaten and cooked briefly.
Butter
Adds richness and helps brown the floured steak pieces in the pan.
Gravy
Provides liquid for the simmered sauce, carrying flavour and keeping the meat moist.
Flour (in the method)
Dredges the steak and, kneaded into butter, thickens the sauce as it simmers.
Shallot
Adds a mild, savoury onion flavour to the sauce.
Pickled walnut
Adds a sharp, tangy flavour that cuts through the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer without boiling. Keeping the sauce just below a boil stops the gravy from reducing too fast or turning tough, and lets the flour thicken it smoothly without lumps.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, shallot, capers. 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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