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Creole Dried-beef

A creamy dish of dried beef cooked in butter, flour, milk, and optional egg.

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

Creole Dried-beef

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the beef

  1. Pour boiling water over the dried beef and let it stand for 15 minutes, then drain the beef.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and add the beef, stirring until thoroughly heated.

  2. Dust the beef with flour and mix well.

  3. Add the milk and stir constantly until boiling.

  4. Push the pan to the back of the stove and let it simmer for 5 minutes.

  5. Add an egg 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. 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

Dried beef
Provides the main meaty, salty flavor of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and carries flavor through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce as it heats.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the creamy sauce and keeps the beef moist.

The step that matters

Stir constantly until boiling. Flour only thickens the milk as it heats, and milk can scorch or form lumps on the bottom of the pan. Constant stirring keeps the sauce smooth and stops it sticking.

“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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