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Yankee Dried Beef

A dish of thinly sliced dried beef simmered in milk and butter, thickened with flour, optionally finished with beaten eggs.

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

Yankee Dried Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Slice the dried beef very thin.

  2. Place it in a frying pan and cover with water.

  3. Bring to a boil, then pour off the water.

Make the sauce

  1. Add 1 pint of milk and 1 tablespoon of butter.

  2. Mix 2 tablespoons of flour with a little milk to thicken, then stir into the pan.

  3. Just before serving, if desired, quickly stir in 6-8 beaten 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Dried beef
Provides the salty, savory meat flavor that the whole dish is built on.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which the flour thickens.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and smooths the sauce.
Eggs
Add body and richness to the sauce when stirred in and gently set by heat.

The step that matters

Stirring in the eggs. Eggs stirred into a hot sauce can scramble or curdle if the heat is too high or they cook too long. Adding them quickly just before serving lets them thicken gently and stay 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.

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