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Dried Beef Creamed

A dish of shredded dried beef cooked in a butter‑flour cream sauce, served over toast.

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 ↓

Dried Beef Creamed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Shred the dried beef finely.

  2. Heat and brown the beef slightly in 2 tablespoons of butter.

  3. Rinse the beef under cold water to remove excess butter and salt.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pan, cream together 1 tablespoon of butter and 1 tablespoon of flour.

  2. Heat 3 cups of milk and gradually add it to the butter-flour mixture, stirring until smooth.

  3. Add the beef to the cream mixture and serve over toast.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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 salty, savory meat flavor that defines the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor, and helps the beef brown lightly.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce when cooked with butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Adding the milk to the butter-flour mixture. Flour must be fully blended with the fat before liquid is added. Adding the warm milk gradually and stirring keeps the starch dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

“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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