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Frizzled Beef

A dish of dried beef cooked with butter, cream, milk, flour, pepper, and egg.

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

Frizzled Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beef

  1. Heat a pan until very hot and add the dried beef.

  2. Cook until the beef is well curled.

Make the gravy

  1. Add the butter, cream, and sweet milk; bring to a boil.

  2. Thicken the mixture with the flour smoothed in cream and add a dash of pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. In a serving dish, break the egg and stir slightly with a fork.

  2. Pour the hot beef and gravy over the egg, stirring quickly, and 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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 base that curls and crisps in the hot pan.
Sweet or sour cream
Adds richness and body to the gravy, giving it a smooth, creamy texture.
Flour
Thickens the cream and milk mixture into a gravy by starch gelatinization.
Egg
Partly cooks from the hot gravy and beef, adding richness and a silkier coating.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor to the gravy.

The step that matters

Pour the hot beef and gravy over the egg, stirring quickly. The hot mixture must be stirred quickly so the raw egg cooks gently and evenly into strands instead of setting in lumps. Serving immediately keeps the egg tender.

“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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