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Creamed Dried Beef with Baked Potatoes

A creamy sauce of dried beef, butter, flour, and milk served over baked potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 with Baked Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Wash and pierce the potatoes, then bake for 45-60 minutes until tender.

Make the creamed beef

  1. In a skillet, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and stir for 1 minute.

  3. Gradually whisk in the milk, cooking until thickened.

  4. Chop the dried beef and add it to the sauce, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  5. Serve the creamed beef over the baked potatoes.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

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 defines the creamed sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flour so it can be cooked into the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce when cooked with the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it body and creaminess as it thickens.
Potatoes
Bake to a tender, soft base that holds the creamed beef.

The step that matters

Gradually whisk in the milk. Adding milk slowly while whisking keeps the flour evenly dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps. Cooking it until thickened lets the starch gelatinize and set 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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