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Beef Collops

Beef collops are thin slices of minced steak fried and simmered in gravy with butter, capers, shallot, and pickled walnut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

  1. Cut the steak into thin pieces about 3 inches long.

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

Fry and combine

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter and fry the pieces for about 3 minutes.

  2. Transfer the fried pieces to a small saucepan and pour the gravy over them.

  3. Add a piece of butter kneaded with a little flour, along with seasoning and other ingredients.

Simmer

  1. Simmer the mixture gently, ensuring it does not boil.

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. Shallot + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

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

  3. Walnut + caperstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together156 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + caperstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Minced steak
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender when cooked gently.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the pieces brown when fried.
Gravy
Supplies moisture and liquid for the sauce that the pieces simmer in.
Shallot
Adds a mild savoury aroma once softened in the sauce.
Pickled walnut
Adds a sharp, tangy acidity that cuts the richness of the butter and meat.
Capers
Add a briny, sharp acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer gently, do not boil. A rolling boil toughens the meat proteins and can make the sauce separate or thicken unevenly, so keep the heat low and the liquid barely moving.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, shallot, capers):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, shallot, 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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