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Chipped Beef in Butter

Thinly shaved dried beef cooked in butter and seasoned with pepper, served on toast or in dishes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Chipped Beef in Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shave the dried beef very thinly using a knife or an inverted plane.

  2. Melt enough butter in a pan to cover the bottom.

  3. Add 1 cup of the shaved beef to the melted butter.

  4. Dredge with pepper and stir until heated through.

Serve

  1. Serve heaped on thin toast or in individual deep dishes.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  2. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

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

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, savoury meat that forms the main body of the dish.
Butter
Melts to coat the thin beef slices, adding richness and moisture for gentle heating.

The step that matters

Shave the dried beef very thinly. Thin slices heat quickly and stay tender in the butter, while thick pieces stay tough and chewy. Thin shaving also lets the beef soften evenly.

“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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