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Minced Collops

A dish of finely minced steak cooked with onion, flour, stock, and mushroom ketchup, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Minced Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the meat very finely by hand.

  2. Heat the butter or fat in a sauté pan or frying pan.

  3. Fry the onion until lightly browned.

Make the collops

  1. Add the flour and fry for a minute.

  2. Stir in the minced meat and cook for a few minutes.

  3. Add the stock or water, bouquet garni, and mushroom ketchup.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  5. Cook very slowly for about 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve garnished with slices of toasted bread.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 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

Rump steak
Provides the meat that forms the body of the dish once finely minced and cooked.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce as it cooks with the fat and onion.
Butter or good fat
Carries heat for frying the onion and meat and adds richness and flavour.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth when fried until lightly browned.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth and acidity to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook very slowly for about 15 minutes. Gentle heat keeps the finely minced meat tender and prevents it from toughening or drying out, while the flour thickens the liquid smoothly without lumps or scorching.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, thyme, mushroom, flour, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, thyme, mushroom, flour, 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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