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Creamed Dried Beef

Creamed dried beef is a savory dish of dried beef simmered, browned, and finished in a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Creamed Dried Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Place the beef in a frying pan, cover with cold water, and gradually heat to simmering.

  2. Drain the beef and return it to the stove, stirring to dry off all the water.

Make the creamed sauce

  1. Add the butter to the beef and cook until browned, about 4 minutes, stirring constantly.

  2. Add the flour to the fat, stir well, and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Slowly add the milk, stirring until it thickens into a creamy dressing for the beef.

  4. Dust lightly with pepper before serving.

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. 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. Milk + flourtop 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 salty, savory meat base that the cream sauce is built around.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the creamy sauce, thickened by the flour-fat mixture.
Butter
Supplies fat for browning the beef and for carrying the flour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce when cooked with the fat.

The step that matters

Adding the milk to the flour and fat. Pouring the milk in quickly or without constant stirring can leave lumps, because flour starch must be evenly dispersed before it swells and thickens the liquid.

“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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