Skip to main content
Main

Beef-collop

Thinly sliced beef collops simmered in gravy with butter, flour, shallot, walnut, pickled cucumber, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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-collop

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the beef into 3‑inch long pieces and beat them with the blade of a knife.

  2. Coat the beef pieces in flour.

Cook and stew

  1. Fry the collops in butter for 2 minutes.

  2. Transfer the collops to a small stew‑pan and cover with gravy.

  3. Add the butter rubbed into flour, pepper, salt, shallot, walnut, pickled cucumbers, and capers.

  4. Ensure the mixture does not boil.

Serve

  1. Serve the stew in a very hot covered dish.

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. Cucumber + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Shallot + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together264 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main body of the dish; beating tenderises the thin slices before they cook.
Flour
Coats the beef and, rubbed with butter, thickens the gravy into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour when frying, and helps bind the flour thickener.
Gravy
Forms the liquid base of the stew, carrying the flavours of the other ingredients.
Pickled cucumbers
Add sharp acidity that cuts through the richness of the gravy and butter.
Capers
Add a briny, sharp acidity that contrasts with the savoury beef sauce.

The step that matters

Ensure the mixture does not boil. Boiling a flour-thickened sauce can make it grainy or cause it to break, and can toughen the beef proteins. Keeping it at a gentle simmer or below keeps the sauce smooth and the meat tender.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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

You might also like

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