Skip to main content
Main

Dried Beef with Cream

A dish of finely shaved dried beef simmered in cream or milk and butter, seasoned with pepper, thickened with flour, served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Dried Beef with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Shave the beef very finely.

  2. Soak the beef in cold water on the back of the stove until it returns to its original size.

  3. Once soft and the water is hot (but not boiling), remove from heat and drain the water.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Pour in the cream (or milk and butter) and add a pinch of pepper.

  2. Bring to a boil and thicken with flour mixed in a little milk.

Serve

  1. Serve on dipped toast or as preferred.

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. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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 (in the method)
Provides the main savory flavour and chewy texture once rehydrated in the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body, and thickens into a smooth sauce when heated.
Flour
Thickens the cream as it heats, giving the sauce a smooth, coating consistency.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with flour. Flour mixed into a little milk first disperses evenly. Added dry or in lumps, it stays clumpy, and the sauce will not thicken smoothly.

“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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes