Skip to main content
Main

Dried Beef

A dish of sliced dried beef cooked in milk with corn starch, butter, pepper, and eggs, served with baked potatoes.

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

Why it works: Milk and butter 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Place the shaved dried beef in a frying pan with enough cold water to cover it.

  2. Heat over medium heat for 10 minutes until it boils.

  3. Drain the water and add the sweet milk.

Make the sauce

  1. Stir in the corn starch or flour, butter, and pepper.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

Serve

  1. Serve with baked potatoes.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Beef + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,028 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 savory, salty meat flavor and chewy texture of the dish.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base of the creamy sauce.
Corn starch or flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a smoother, more flavorful sauce.
Eggs
Enrich and further thicken the sauce when beaten in and gently heated.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten eggs. Eggs can scramble if the sauce is too hot when they go in. Mixing them well and keeping the heat moderate lets the proteins thicken the sauce smoothly instead of curdling it.

“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.

More dried beef recipes

Creamed 21with Cream 11with Eggs 6on Toast 5and Eggs 4Fricassee 3 See all 35 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes