Name: Beef Gollops
Ingredients: 1 lb. of tinned beef; 2 oz. of butter or dripping; 1 onion; 1 pint of stock; 1 lemon; 1 teaspoon of mushroom ketchup; salt; pepper

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Beef Gollops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Mince the beef finely.

Make the sauce

In a stewpan, melt the butter or dripping.
Add the finely chopped onion and fry until browned.
Stir in the lemon juice, stock, mushroom ketchup, salt, and pepper.
Simmer for about 5 minutes.

Finish and serve

Add the minced beef and simmer for another 5 minutes.
Serve on a hot dish with a border of mashed potatoes or rice.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,232 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,092 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tinned beef: Provides the meat that makes up the body of the dish.
Butter or dripping: Fat for frying the onion, adding richness and flavour.
Onion: Browns in the fat to add sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce.
Lemon: Adds acidity that brightens the savoury flavour of the sauce.
Stock: Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the flavour.

Swap the lemon

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

Lemonthe original
Avocadofits about as well
Limefits about as well
Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, 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.