Skip to main content
Main

Creamed Dried Beef

A dish of thinly shaved dried smoked beef cooked with butter, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Creamed Dried Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shave the beef thin and cut it into small bits.

  2. Beat the eggs well and add the milk to them.

  3. Heat the butter in a frying pan.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the beef and cook for three minutes, stirring constantly.

  2. Pour in the milk and egg mixture, and cook for two more minutes.

  3. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  3. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried smoked beef
Provides the salty, smoky flavour that defines the dish.
Eggs
Set as they cook, giving the dish its creamy, custard-like body.
Milk
Mixed with the eggs to add moisture and softness as they cook.
Butter
Fats the pan and adds richness to the cooked beef and eggs.

The step that matters

Pour in the milk and egg mixture, and cook for two more minutes.. Eggs set quickly over heat and turn grainy or scrambled if overcooked. Stirring steadily keeps the mixture smooth and creamy rather than curdled.

“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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes