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Frizzled Beef

A simmered beef dish thickened 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

Cook the beef

  1. Simmer the beef in water for 30 minutes.

  2. Mix flour with a little cold water and add to the pot.

  3. Add butter and bring to a boil.

Finish and serve

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

  2. 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 dried or smoked beef
Supplies the main savoury, salty and smoky flavour of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounder, silkier mouthfeel to the sauce.
Beaten egg
Enriches the sauce and adds body as its proteins set gently in the hot liquid.
Toasted bread
Gives a crisp base that soaks up the sauce and adds texture.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten egg off the heat. Egg proteins set at moderate temperatures and curdle if the liquid is still boiling. Removing the pot from the heat before stirring lets the egg thicken the sauce smoothly instead of turning grainy.

“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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