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Frizzled Beef

Frizzled Beef is a dish of boiled shaved beef with flour, butter, and egg served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Frizzled Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Make the beef

  1. Simmer the shaved beef in water for 30 minutes.

  2. Mix the flour with a little cold water to moisten it.

  3. Add the moistened flour and butter to the beef and let it boil.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg.

Serve

  1. Serve over slices of toasted bread.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Shaved beef
Provides the main savory flavor and meaty body of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light, smooth sauce as it boils.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Beaten egg
Stirred in off the heat, it enriches and lightly thickens the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg off the heat. If the egg meets a boiling liquid directly, its proteins can scramble into lumps. Removing the pan from heat first lets the egg blend in smoothly and thicken gently.

“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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