Name: Chipped Beef in Cream
Ingredients: 2 pounds chipped beef; 1 quart cream sauce

Why it works: Cream and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,787 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Chipped Beef in Cream

Ingredients

2 pounds chipped beef
1 quart cream sauce

Directions

Parboil the chipped beef for a few minutes.
Drain the beef and add it to a saucepan.
Pour in the cream sauce and simmer until heated through.
Serve warm.

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.

Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,787 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Beef + saucetop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,650 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Beef + creamtop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,128 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chipped beef: Provides the main savory meat flavor and chewy texture of the dish.
Cream sauce: Supplies the creamy moisture and body that coats the beef.

“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.