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Minced Collops

Thinly minced beef and suet cooked with butter and water or gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Minced Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Remove all skin and gristle from the beef.

  2. Mince the beef and beef suet together very finely.

  3. Add the salt and mix well.

  4. Dust the mixture with flour.

Cook

  1. Melt a small amount of butter in a stewpan.

  2. Stir in the minced mixture and add enough water or gravy to moisten.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 meat texture and savoury flavour of the dish.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the minced meat moist and rich while cooking.
Flour
Dusted on the mixture to help thicken the juices as it cooks.

The step that matters

Stir in the minced mixture and add enough water or gravy to moisten.. Too little liquid lets the mince dry out and stick, while too much makes it soggy. Adding just enough liquid keeps the meat tender and gives a moist, cohesive result.

“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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