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Dried Beef

A dish of thinly sliced dried beef simmered in water, milk, butter, and flour, optionally finished with egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Dried Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Place sliced dried beef in a frying pan and cover with water.

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. Pour off the water.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the milk, butter, and a mixture of flour and milk to thicken.

  2. Stir well.

  3. Just before serving, quickly stir in the egg if using.

  4. Alternatively, finely chop the dried beef.

Finish and serve

  1. Freshen it.

  2. Add butter and 6 to 8 eggs.

  3. Stir well.

  4. Serve immediately.

Soften tough beef

  1. For hard pieces of dried beef, soak in cold water overnight.

  2. Boil slowly for 3 to 4 hours before slicing.

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 main salty, savoury meat flavour and the chewy texture of the dish.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that the sauce is built on.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk as its starch swells with heat, giving the sauce body.
Egg
Enriches the sauce and adds body when gently heated.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg just before serving. Egg proteins set when heated, so adding it quickly at the end and stirring well keeps it blended into the sauce instead of cooking into lumps or scrambling in the hot liquid.

“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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