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Collops, Savoury

Collops are sliced lean meat simmered in stock with seasoning, thickened with roux, and served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Collops, Savoury

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Brown the meat in a pan.

  2. Minced onion can be fried with the meat at the start.

  3. Cover the meat with stock and season with pepper, nutmeg, and chopped parsley.

  4. Add a little mushroom ketchup and simmer for at least an hour.

  5. Thicken the sauce with browned flour or roux and add salt to taste.

  6. For enhanced flavor, add a glass of port or claret near the end and sweet herbs at the beginning.

  7. Garnish with croutons.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Forms the body of the dish; slow simmering in stock makes it tender.
Browned flour or roux
Thickens the sauce and adds a toasted, savoury depth.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the sauce.
Stock
Provides the liquid base that the meat simmers in and forms the sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with browned flour or roux. Flour must be cooked to thicken properly; adding it raw or unevenly can leave a pasty taste and lumps, while stirring it into hot liquid gradually gives a smooth, glossy sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, mushroom, ketchup, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, mushroom, ketchup, flour. 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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