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Savoury Minced Collops

Savory minced collops are a seasoned minced beef dish cooked with butter, flour, herbs, and optional aromatics, finished with catsup or vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Savoury Minced Collops

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Savoury Minced Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and stir in the flour until it begins to color.

  2. Add the parsley, salt, and pepper, stirring over gentle heat until deep yellow brown.

Cook the collops

  1. Add the minced meat and separate it with a fork until hot.

  2. Gradually pour in the boiling water and stew gently for ten minutes.

  3. Before serving, stir in catsup, chili vinegar, or lemon juice, and optional minced onion, eschalot, or garlic.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Carries the flavor and helps the flour brown into a rich base.
Flour
Thickens the liquid and, once toasted, adds a nutty color and depth.
Minced meat (beef)
Forms the body of the dish, giving savory flavor and substance.
Boiling water
Loosens the flour base into a sauce and gently cooks the meat through.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the butter. Cooking the flour until deep yellow brown toasts it for color and flavor, but scorching turns it bitter. Gentle heat and constant stirring keep it even.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, parsley, pepper, meat, beef, vinegar):

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

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