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
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Cut the dried beef into fine pieces and boil for 10 minutes, then drain.
Bring 1½ cups of milk to a boil.
Make the sauce
Mix a lump of butter with an equal amount of flour and stir into the boiling milk until smooth.
Add the drained dried beef to the milk mixture and heat until boiling hot.
Serve
Pour the mixture over slices of buttered toast and season with pepper to taste.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,971 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,759 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it heats.
- Butter
- Adds richness and helps the flour blend smoothly into the milk.
- Flour
- Thickens the milk as its starch swells when heated.
- Dried beef
- Provides the salty, savoury meat flavour that defines the dish.
The step that matters
Stirring the butter and flour into the boiling milk. Flour clumps when dropped into hot liquid unevenly. Blending it with butter first and stirring steadily as it goes in keeps the sauce smooth rather than lumpy.
“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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