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Dried Beef Dressed with Cream

A dish of sliced dried beef simmered in cream or milk, seasoned with pepper, served on crackers or toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Dried Beef Dressed with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Thinly slice the dried beef using a knife or potato slicer.

  2. Measure 1 pint of the beef without pressing it down.

  3. Place the beef in a saucepan and cover with cold water.

  4. Heat slowly and simmer briefly if the beef is very salty.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Drain the water, then add 1½ cups of cream and season with pepper.

  2. Alternatively, use 1 cup of milk with 1 ounce butter and 2 teaspoons flour.

  3. Serve on split crackers or toast.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Dried beef
Provides the salty, savory meat flavor that is the centerpiece of the dish.
Rich cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the milk-based sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk sauce so it coats the beef.

The step that matters

Simmering the beef in cold water. Heating slowly and simmering briefly draws out excess salt from the dried beef. Salty beef can make the finished sauce unpleasantly salty, so tasting and adjusting the simmer matters.

“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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