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Beef Collops
374. Take some beef that is tender and free from skin, cut it into small thin pieces, hack it with a knife; then butter a stewpan, and put in as much beef as will cover the pan, with a little onion, some cucumber cut small, and salt and pepper. Put it over a quick fire, and give two or three tosses about; two or three minutes will do them. Add a little flour, butter, and water to the stewpan after taking the collops out, to make your gravy. Garnish, if approved, with pickles. وم
A fast pan dish of thin-cut beef, closer to a stir-fry than a stew. The whole point is speed: two or three minutes over a fierce heat, then the pan is deglazed into a small gravy.
- The hinge: do not crowd or overcook"As much beef as will cover the pan" means a single layer, not a heap. Piled collops steam in their own juice and turn grey and tough; work in batches if your pan is small.
- What a collop isA collop is a thin slice or escalope of meat, here hacked flat with a knife. Rump, sirloin tail or a well-trimmed piece of chuck tender, sliced across the grain at about 5 mm and flattened, is a reasonable modern equivalent.
- "Hack it with a knife"Scoring and beating the slices breaks the fibres so they cook through in the two or three minutes allowed; the recipe does not say which part of the knife to use. Skip it and the meat is more likely to come out chewy.
- A quick fireThe highest heat your hob and pan will take, and the pan hot before the beef goes in. A heavy stainless or cast-iron pan holds the heat better than thin nonstick.
- CucumberCooked cucumber was common in nineteenth-century English savoury cookery and is not a misprint. Peel, seed and dice it; it softens quickly and gives a faint melon-like sweetness against the onion.
- The gravyAfter lifting the meat out, work about a teaspoon of flour into a knob of butter in the hot pan, then add roughly a quarter pint (150 ml) of water or light stock and scrape up the browned bits. Return any juices from the resting meat before serving.
- Butter alone will scorchAt the heat this needs, plain butter darkens fast. A spoonful of neutral oil with the butter, or clarified butter, keeps the fond brown rather than black.
- YieldAbout 1 lb (450 g) of beef will serve three, with rice, mashed potato or plain toast to take the gravy. The pickles of the garnish might be walnuts, gherkins or samphire.