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How to Cook Dried Beef

A method for cooking sliced dried beef in a milk and water mixture thickened with egg and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,759 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

How to Cook Dried Beef

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the milk and water in a saucepan.

  2. Thicken the mixture with the beaten egg and a little flour.

  3. Bring to a boil, then add the sliced dried beef.

  4. Immediately remove from heat to avoid overcooking.

  5. If the beef is very salty, freshen it in hot water before adding.

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + beeftop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Beaten egg
Thickens the milk mixture as it heats, giving it a creamy body.
Flour
Helps thicken the liquid and gives the sauce a smoother, stable texture.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the sauce and adds richness and body.
Dried beef
Provides the savory meat flavor and salty character that defines the dish.

The step that matters

Immediately remove from heat to avoid overcooking. Once the egg and flour have thickened the mixture, continued boiling can curdle the egg and make the sauce grainy or lumpy, and overcooked dried beef turns tough and chewy.

“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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