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Deviled Beef in Batter

Slices of roast beef marinated in vinegar, salt, and mustard, coated in a batter of egg, milk, and flour, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Deviled Beef in Batter

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut slices of underdone roast beef and marinate in vinegar, salt, and mustard for 1 hour, turning occasionally.

  2. Lay beef on a clean cloth to absorb liquid.

Batter and fry

  1. Dip marinated beef in batter made from egg, milk, flour, and a little salt.

  2. Fry in lard or dripping until golden brown, then drain excess grease 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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Vinegar
Acidifies the marinade, adding tang and helping to tenderise the beef.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps it set and crisp when fried.
Prepared flour
Forms the body of the batter, giving it structure and a crisp golden coat.
Milk
Adds moisture to the batter and helps it coat the beef evenly.
Made mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that gives the beef its deviled character.

The step that matters

Drying the beef before battering. Excess liquid left on the marinated beef will thin the batter and steam rather than fry, so the coating may slide off or turn soggy instead of crisping.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, egg, milk, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, egg, milk, flour. 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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