Home › The Principles of Cookery › Beef Collops
Beef Collops
Take two pounds of thinly-cut and tender rump steak, and divide it into small pieces. Lay the pieces in a frying-pan for two or three minutes. When brown put them into a stewpan and pour a pint of gravy into it. Take a quarter of a pound of butter rubbed into a little flour; add this to the gravy with a seasoning of salt and pepper, one shallot finely shred, the best part of a pickled walnut, and a small tea-spoonful of capers. Let the whole simmer for about ten minutes. The steak may be stewed with water instead of gravy if preferred. Serve in a covered dish, and send hot to table. Cost of beef, 1s. 4d. per pound. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A quick Victorian beef stew built on thin slices rather than cubes, so almost all of the work happens in the pan. The single thing to get right is the length of the simmer.
- Collops means thin slicesCut the rump across the grain into small, thin pieces; the recipe specifies only "thinly-cut" and "divide it into small pieces", so the exact size is left to judgement. Thick chunks will not cook through in ten minutes and will turn out grey and tough.
- "Lay the pieces in a frying-pan"This assumes a hot pan already filmed with dripping or butter. Work in batches and give the meat room; crowded slices steam and never brown.
- A pint of gravyHere "gravy" is the Victorian kitchen's brown stock, not thickened pan sauce. Use 20 fl oz (an imperial pint, a little under 2 1/2 US cups) of good beef stock; the water alternative the recipe offers will give a noticeably thinner result.
- The butter and flourA quarter-pound of butter rubbed into flour is a beurre manié, and it is a heavy hand by modern taste for a pint of liquid. Half that, worked with about 1 oz of flour and whisked in a little at a time, thickens the sauce without leaving it greasy.
- Pickled walnutStill sold in jars in Britain, harder to find elsewhere. It is there for dark, malty sharpness; a teaspoon of mushroom ketchup or a dash of Worcestershire sauce covers similar ground, though neither is the same thing.
- Ten minutes and no moreRump sliced this thin is already tender. The simmer is to marry the sauce, not to cook the beef, and anything past about ten minutes at a bare bubble will dry the slices out.
- Seasoning orderPickled walnut, capers and stock all carry salt. Season at the end rather than the start.
- Yield and serviceThree to four as written, with mashed or boiled potatoes and something green. The "covered dish" is simply a lidded dish, best warmed beforehand — the sauce chills fast.
- The price note1s. 4d. per pound is a period retail price, included because Cassell's gives a cost and a yield for its dishes as an aid to household budgeting.
"Collop" is an old word for a slice of meat, generally traced to Middle English colhoppe and cousin to the Scandinavian kalops, a slice-of-beef stew still eaten in Sweden. It survives in Collop Monday, the day before Shrove Tuesday, when the last of the household's meat was eaten up before Lent. By the time Cassell's was compiled in the later nineteenth century the term had settled into meaning any dish of thin-cut fried meat finished in sauce, and the seasonings here — shallot, pickled walnut, capers — are the sort of sharp, savoury additions often used to push a plain brown gravy toward sharpness and depth. The costing at the end, and the note that water may stand in for gravy, mark this as a recipe written for a household that kept accounts and did not always have stock on hand.