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Creamed Beef or Veal

Roast beef or veal simmered in a milk‑flour sauce served over buttered toast.

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 ↓

Creamed Beef or Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut cold roast beef or veal into small squares.

  2. Boil 2 cups of milk in a saucepan.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a separate bowl, mix 2 tablespoons of flour with 2 tablespoons of butter, then add salt and pepper.

  2. Stir the flour mixture into the boiling milk and let it boil for a few minutes.

  3. Pour the creamed beef over the squares of beef or veal.

Serve

  1. Place buttered toast on a hot platter and pour the creamed beef over it before serving.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and butter 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it boils.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce when cooked in it.
Butter
Mixed with the flour to coat it, helping it blend smoothly and adding richness.
Roast beef or veal (in the method)
Provides the main meat, cut into small pieces for the dish.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the boiling milk. Flour clumps if dropped in unevenly, so stirring it in steadily while the milk boils helps it dissolve and thicken into a smooth sauce.

“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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