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Beef Collops

Beef collops are small pieces of canned beef simmered with water, onion, capers, mushroom ketchup, and butter, then fried in flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Beef Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the meat from the tin and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Dredge the meat pieces in flour and fry them in the pan used for the onion.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pot, combine the water, any jelly from the meat, capers, and minced onion fried in butter.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Thicken the sauce with the remaining butter and flour.

Finish and serve

  1. Once the onion is tender, add the meat and mushroom ketchup, and serve hot.

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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Capers + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 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

Ramornie beef
Provides the main protein, which is cut into pieces and cooked in the sauce.
Flour
Coats the meat for browning and thickens the sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Fries the onion and meat and adds richness to the sauce.
Small onion
Adds savoury sweetness and body to the sauce as it softens.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with the butter and flour. Flour needs to be cooked into the fat and liquid so it thickens smoothly without lumps or a raw starchy taste. Stirring as it heats helps the starch swell evenly.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, flour, onion, mushroom, ketchup, 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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