Name: Dried Beef and Cream with Poached Eggs
Ingredients: 1 teacupful (about ½ cup) dried beef, shaved very thin; 1 pint cream; black pepper to taste; a pinch of cayenne pepper; 1 teaspoon corn starch; 4 eggs; coarse sea salt to taste (optional); milk and butter (if no cream is available)

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 and Cream with Poached Eggs

Ingredients

1 teacupful (about ½ cup) dried beef, shaved very thin
1 pint cream
black pepper to taste
a pinch of cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon corn starch
4 eggs
coarse sea salt to taste (optional)
milk and butter (if no cream is available)

Directions

Make the cream sauce

Heat the cream in a saucepan over medium heat.
Season the cream with black pepper and cayenne.
Once hot, thicken the cream slightly with corn starch.
Add the dried beef to the mixture.

Add the eggs and serve

Just before serving, break the eggs into the mixture and stir carefully to avoid breaking the eggs.
When the egg whites are set, the dish is ready to serve.
Add salt if the beef does not provide enough seasoning.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Pepper + corntop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,324 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

Cream: Forms the rich base of the sauce and gives it a smooth, creamy body.
Dried beef: Adds salty, savory flavor and chewy texture to the cream.
Corn starch: Thickens the warm cream so it coats the beef and eggs.
Eggs: Set as they cook in the sauce, giving the dish its soft, tender body.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs to the mixture. Eggs must be stirred in gently just before serving. Egg proteins set when heated, so the whites firm while the yolks stay soft, and vigorous stirring can break the eggs into the sauce.

“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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Dried Beef and Cream with Poached Eggs