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Frizzled Beef

Frizzled Beef is a dish of dried beef simmered in butter, flour, and milk, served with toasted bread and hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Frizzled Beef

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, cream together the butter and flour.

  2. Gradually stir in the boiling milk (or water) and cook for several minutes.

Add the beef and serve

  1. Add the dried beef and let it sit on the back of the stove for 15 minutes to heat through without cooking.

  2. Stir occasionally and add more milk if the mixture is too thick or salty.

  3. Season lightly with black pepper and serve with toasted bread dipped in salted boiling water and buttered generously.

  4. Garnish with hot hard-boiled eggs.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, adding richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce that clings to the beef.
Dried beef
Provides the salty, savoury meat flavour that defines the dish.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the sauce and keeps the mixture moist.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the boiling milk. Adding hot liquid slowly to the butter and flour mixture, while stirring, keeps starch from clumping, so the sauce cooks smooth and evenly thickened.

“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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