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Scotch Collops

A dish of finely minced steak cooked with butter, shallot, stock, salt, and pepper, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,898 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Scotch Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the steak very finely without chopping it.

Make the collops

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and fry the minced steak.

  2. Add the shallot, salt, pepper, and stock.

  3. Simmer gently for one hour.

Serve

  1. Arrange on a dish and serve with toasted bread as a garnish.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  2. Butter + shallottop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lean steak
Forms the main body of the dish and provides its meaty texture once cooked through.
Butter
Adds fat for frying, carrying flavour and helping the meat brown lightly.
Shallot
Adds a mild, sweet onion-like aroma that deepens during gentle cooking.
Stock
Supplies liquid for the long simmer, keeping the meat moist and building savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for one hour. A gentle simmer lets the finely minced meat become tender without toughening. Boiling hard tightens muscle proteins and can leave the meat dry and chewy.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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.

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