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Beef-Collops

Thin beef collops cooked in butter and gravy with shallot, walnut, pickled cucumber, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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-Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut beef into pieces three inches long.

  2. Beat pieces with the blade of a knife and flour them.

Cook and finish

  1. Fry the collops in butter for 2 minutes.

  2. Transfer them to a small stew-pan and cover with gravy.

  3. Add butter mixed with flour, pepper, salt, shallot, walnut, cucumbers, and capers.

  4. Ensure the mixture does not boil.

  5. Serve in a 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
Forms the main body of the dish and gives it its meaty texture when tender slices are cooked briefly.
Flour
Coats the beef and, mixed with butter, thickens the gravy into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Fat that fries the collops and adds richness and a browned flavour to the sauce.
Gravy
Liquid base that moistens the beef and forms the body of the sauce.
Capers
Add a sharp, acidic bite that cuts through the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Ensure the mixture does not boil.. Boiling a sauce thickened with flour can break it and toughen the meat, so it should stay just below a boil to keep the beef tender and the sauce smooth.

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.

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