Skip to main content
Main

Frizzled Beef

A dish of thinly sliced smoked beef coated in a butter‑flour‑milk sauce and finished with egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Frizzled Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Slice the beef very thin.

  2. Pour boiling water over it and let it stand for 10 minutes to reduce saltiness.

  3. Drain the water from the beef.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan. Add the flour.

  2. Gradually stir in the hot milk.

  3. Season with pepper.

  4. Beat the egg. Gradually mix the egg into the sauce.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat the beef in 1 tablespoon of butter until the edges curl up.

  2. Drain the butter from the beef.

  3. Pour the sauce over the beef.

  4. Serve immediately to prevent curdling.

  5. Optionally, add 1 cup of cream to the beef after cooking.

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. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Smoked beef
Provides the main savory, salty flavor and meaty body of the dish.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy texture when heated.
Egg
Thickens the sauce as it gently sets, adding richness and body.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a stable white sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor to the sauce and helps brown the edges of the beef.

The step that matters

Serve immediately to prevent curdling. The egg in the sauce can curdle if it overheats or sits too long, turning grainy and separated. Serving right after combining keeps the sauce smooth.

“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.

More frizzled beef recipes

and Eggs 3 See all 44 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes