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 ↓
Dried Beef
Ingredients
Directions
Make the sauce
Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat.
Add the chipped beef and fry until browned.
Mix the flour with a little cold milk to create a paste.
Add the remaining milk to the pan and thicken the mixture.
Serve
Pour the sauce over toasted bread (sippets) and serve.
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.
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Beef + milktop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,759 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together10,847 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
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
- Chipped beef
- Provides the main savory flavor and meaty body of the dish.
- Butter
- Fat that cooks the beef and carries flavor into the sauce.
- Flour
- Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked into a paste first.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that thickens into the creamy sauce.
The step that matters
Thickening the milk with the flour paste. Flour must be mixed smoothly with cold milk before adding the rest, otherwise it clumps. Stirring as the sauce heats lets starch granules swell and thicken it evenly.
“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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