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Dried Beef

A sauce made from finely chopped dried beef, milk, flour, butter, and pepper, served over baked potatoes.

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 ↓

Dried Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Chop the dried beef finely.

  2. Place the beef in a saucepan and cover with cold water.

  3. Bring to a boil, then drain the water.

Make the sauce

  1. Add 1½ cups of milk to the beef.

  2. Thicken the mixture with 1 tablespoon of flour mixed with cold milk or water.

  3. Stir in the butter and pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve with baked potatoes.

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. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

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 savory, salty flavor and the meaty body of the dish.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it creaminess and body.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the sauce a smooth, cohesive texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour. Flour must be mixed with cold liquid before adding so it disperses without lumps. Its starch then swells as the mixture heats, thickening the sauce 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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