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Beef Collops in the Ban

Beef collops are small flattened beef pieces cooked with onions, butter, flour, and a gravy of vinegar and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Collops in the Ban

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut steaks into small pieces and flatten them.

  2. Brown a little butter with flour in a pan.

  3. Layer the collops in rows with pepper, salt, and sliced onions until the pan is covered.

Make the gravy and finish

  1. When nearly done, draw them back and make gravy from the skinny parts of the beef.

  2. Thicken the gravy with butter and flour, adding a little vinegar and ketchup.

  3. When it boils, skim it and mix the collops into the gravy, then give it another boil.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

Flour
Thickens the butter and pan juices into a smooth gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and helps brown the flour for the gravy base.
Sliced onions
Add sweetness and savory flavor as they cook down with the beef.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the gravy and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Skimming the gravy before adding the collops. Skimming removes fat and foam that rise when the gravy boils, keeping the sauce clean and less greasy before the beef is returned to it.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, vinegar, 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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