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To Cook Dried Beef

A dish of sliced dried beef stewed in gravy, mixed with egg and flour, served on toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

To Cook Dried Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Slice the dried beef as thinly as possible.

  2. Soak the beef in water overnight or for a shorter time if it's not very salty.

Make the gravy

  1. Stew the beef in enough water to create gravy until tender.

  2. Beat the egg with the flour.

  3. Add the butter to the beef and stir in the egg and flour mixture.

Serve

  1. Toast the bread, place the beef on it, and pour the gravy over the beef.

  2. Add pepper at the table if desired.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, 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 savory, salty meat flavor that the gravy is built around.
Egg
Beaten with flour, it helps thicken the gravy and adds richness.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks, giving it body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the gravy, carrying flavor and smoothing its texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg and flour into the beef. Flour mixed into hot liquid can clump if added without being smoothed first. Beating it with the egg and stirring steadily helps it disperse evenly, so the gravy thickens smoothly rather than lumpy.

“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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