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Frizzled Beef with Cream Toast

A dish of boiled dried beef served over toasted bread with a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 with Cream Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Place the chipped dried beef in a flat saucepan and pour cold water over it.

  2. Bring to a boil, then pour off the water to freshen the beef.

  3. Add butter and white pepper, and cook for 1 minute.

Make the cream and toast

  1. Toast the bread slices and set aside.

  2. In a double boiler, bring milk and butter to a boil.

  3. Mix cornstarch with a little milk, then add to the boiling mixture and cook for 4 minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour the cream over the toasted bread on a hot dish.

  2. Top each slice with a spoonful of frizzled beef, or serve separately.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chipped dried beef
Provides the salty, savory meat flavor and the frizzled texture of the topping.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream sauce.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth cream when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the cream and the beef.
Bread
Provides a crisp, absorbent base for the cream.

The step that matters

Cooking the cornstarch mixture. Cornstarch must be mixed with cold milk first so it does not clump, then cooked at a boil so the starch granules swell and thicken the cream.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, bread, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Pepperfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, bread, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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