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Collops, Minced

A minced steak dish cooked with onion, flour, stock, bouquet garni, and mushroom ketchup, served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Collops, Minced

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the meat very finely by hand.

Make the collops

  1. Heat the butter in a sauté pan or frying pan.

  2. Fry the onion until lightly browned.

  3. Add the flour and fry for a minute.

  4. Stir in the minced meat and cook for a few minutes.

  5. Add the stock or water, bouquet-garni, and mushroom ketchup.

  6. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve on toast.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 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; mincing it finely gives the collops a tender, even texture.
Flour
Cooked with the butter and onion, it thickens the stock into a light sauce that coats the meat.
Butter
Provides fat for frying the onion and meat, carrying flavour and helping them brown.
Onion
Browned in butter, it adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the base of the dish.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savoury, umami flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the flour. Frying the flour for a minute in the fat cooks out its raw taste and helps it thicken the liquid smoothly when stock is added, rather than leaving lumps or a floury flavour.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, thyme, mushroom, flour, pepper. 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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