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Creamed Dried Beef

A creamy dish made with dried beef, butter, flour, milk, eggs, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Creamed Dried Beef

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a small frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the milk and heat until hot.

  3. Add the finely minced beef and cook for 3 minutes.

  4. Mix the flour with a little cold milk until smooth, then add a dash of pepper.

  5. Stir the flour mixture into the beef until it thickens.

  6. Remove from heat.

  7. Add the well-beaten eggs.

  8. Serve immediately.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 savoury flavour and body of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when melted in the pan.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a cream.
Eggs
Set with gentle heat to give the cream added body and richness.

The step that matters

Stir the flour mixture into the beef until it thickens. Flour must be fully smoothed in cold milk first, or it forms lumps when heated. Stirring keeps starch granules dispersed so the sauce thickens evenly as the starch swells with heat.

“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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