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Dried Beef

A fried dish of sliced dried beef cooked with butter, pepper, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Dried Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Shave the dried beef into thin slices.

  2. Place the beef in a frying pan and cover with boiling water.

  3. Cook over heat for 10 minutes, then drain the water.

  4. Cut the beef into small bits with a knife and fork.

Cook and serve

  1. Return the beef to the hot pan, add butter and pepper.

  2. Beat the eggs and stir them into the pan with the beef.

  3. Toss and stir the mixture for about 2 minutes.

  4. Serve in a covered dish.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Beef + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 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 or smoked beef
Provides the salty, savoury meat flavour that defines the dish.
Eggs
Set when heated, binding the beef into a soft, tender scramble.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the eggs cook smoothly without sticking.

The step that matters

Draining the soaked beef. Boiling softens the dried beef and removes some of its surface salt. Draining well keeps excess water out of the pan, so the eggs set into a scramble rather than a watery mixture.

“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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