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Dried Beef Cooked

A dish of stewed dried beef served on toast with a gravy made from beaten egg, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Dried Beef Cooked

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Thinly slice the dried beef and soak it in water to freshen.

  2. Stew the beef in a little water until tender.

Make the gravy

  1. Beat the egg with the flour.

  2. Add the butter to the beef, then stir in the egg and flour mixture.

Serve

  1. Serve the beef on toast with the gravy over it.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Dried beef
Provides the main meat and salty, savory flavor of the dish.
Flour
Starch swells as it heats, thickening the gravy.
Egg
Beaten egg adds body to the gravy and helps it set slightly as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel in the gravy.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg and flour mixture. Flour clumps easily, so it should be evenly mixed before stirring it into the beef to avoid lumps. Egg can scramble if it heats too quickly, so it should be stirred in gently. Flour starch thickens the gravy as it heats.

“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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