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Another Way to Make Minced Collops

A dish of finely minced beef and onions simmered with butter, flour, gravy, vinegar, and mushroom catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Another Way to Make Minced Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Finely mince the beef and chop the onions small.

  2. Parboil the minced beef and onions.

  3. Season the mixture with salt and pepper.

Cook

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the minced meat and onions, and cook until light brown, stirring with a spatula.

  3. Dust in the flour and add the gravy or water and vinegar.

  4. Cover the saucepan and let it stew gently for 30 minutes.

  5. Before serving, stir in the mushroom catsup.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main body and meaty texture of the dish.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and brown in the butter.
Butter
Fat for browning the meat and onions and carrying their flavour.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light gravy as it simmers.
Mushroom catsup
Adds savoury, umami depth stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Browning the meat and onions. Cooking until light brown, stirring often, builds savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale or steamed meat tastes flat, and scorching at the pan base leaves a bitter edge.

Swap the onion

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

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

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