Skip to main content
Main

Mince Collops

A dish of browned minced beef simmered with onions, ketchup, and seasonings, served hot and garnished with toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mince Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the collops

  1. Melt the butter or dripping in a saucepan.

  2. Add the minced beef and stir vigorously with a wooden spoon until browned but not hard.

  3. Mix the flour with the cold water and add to the beef.

  4. Add the chopped onions and stew together for 1 hour, stirring frequently to prevent lumps.

  5. A quarter of an hour before serving, add the ketchup, salt, and pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish and garnish with small pieces of toast.

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

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Minced beef
Forms the main body of the dish and browns to add savoury flavour.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the mixture becomes saucy rather than watery.
Onions
Soften during stewing and add sweetness and aroma to the meat.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to season the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and water into the beef. Flour mixed with cold water disperses evenly before heating; adding it without stirring can form lumps that stay in the sauce. Stirring frequently during stewing helps the starch thicken smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes