Skip to main content
Main

Fricassee of Chipped Beef

A creamy beef fricassee made with chipped beef, butter, flour, milk, kitchen bouquet, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Fricassee of Chipped Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Shred the beef.

  2. If the beef is too salty, freshen it by pouring hot water over it, letting it stand for a few moments, then drain and dry.

Make the fricassee

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over low heat.

  2. Add the flour and blend well with the meat.

  3. Stir in the milk and kitchen bouquet, then let it simmer slowly for five minutes.

  4. Add the slightly beaten egg yolks and turn off the burner; the heat will cook the eggs.

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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Chipped beef
Provides the savory meat base and salty, beefy flavor of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor when melted into the roux base.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth sauce that coats the meat.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, giving it a creamy, mellow body.
Eggs
Enrich the sauce and thicken it gently as the residual heat sets the yolks.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken only gently when heated, and boiling or overheating them can curdle the sauce. Adding them off the heat lets residual warmth set them smoothly.

“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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes