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Minced Collops

A dish of minced steak mixed with flour, pepper, salt, and mushroom ketchup, simmered in water and onion, served with diced turnips and carrots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,626 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Minced Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Mince the meat finely and sprinkle with flour, pepper, and salt.

  2. Place in a clean saucepan over low heat and pound until browned.

Simmer and serve

  1. Gradually add the water, stirring until boiling.

  2. Add the ketchup and whole onion, then cook slowly for one hour.

  3. Serve garnished with diced turnips and carrots cooked separately, arranged in little bunches around the 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. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + mushroomtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,253 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

Steak
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender during slow cooking.
Flour
Coats the meat and thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the gravy.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and flavour to the gravy as it cooks slowly.

The step that matters

Cooking the meat over low heat. Browning the minced meat without scorching it builds flavour, while gentle heat keeps the meat from toughening. Adding the water gradually, while stirring, helps the flour blend smoothly into a gravy without lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, 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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