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Beef Collops

A stew of finely minced beef simmered with onion, stock, lemon, and mushroom ketchup, served over mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the beef very fine.

Make the collops

  1. In a stewpan, heat the butter or dripping and add the chopped onion. Cook until nicely browned.

  2. Add the lemon juice, stock, sauce, and seasoning. Simmer for 5 minutes.

  3. Stir in the minced beef and simmer for another 6 minutes.

Serve

  1. Make a border of mashed potatoes on a serving plate and pour the beef mixture in the center.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tinned beef
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the savoury meat base.
Butter or dripping
Carries the heat and adds richness, helping the onion brown well.
Onion
Browns in the fat to add sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce.
Stock
Makes the liquid base that simmers with the meat and thins the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury flavour.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the onion. Cooking the onion until nicely browned develops deeper flavour through the Maillard reaction and caramelisation. Pale onion gives a flatter, less savoury sauce.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Mangofits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, onion, mushroom, pepper, potato. 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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