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Dried Beef Stewed
Heat milk and water (about half of each,, and thicken with a beaten egg and a little flour; when boiled add the beef, sliced as thin as possible, and remove from the fire at once; if the beef is very salt it will need freshening in a little hot water before going into the gravy, but if not it will season it without being freshened.
A plain creamed chipped beef, of the sort that appeared on breakfast tables and lunch counters for a century. The stray heading about mushrooms belongs to a neighbouring entry and has nothing to do with this dish; ignore it.
- The hinge: the beef goes in lastDried beef toughens and curls if it simmers. Bring the sauce to the boil first, drop in the sliced beef, stir once and pull the pan off the heat, as the recipe directs; a brief moment in the hot gravy is enough to warm it through.
- Egg and flour togetherThe original says to heat the milk and water and thicken them with a beaten egg and a little flour, without saying at what temperature the egg goes in. Safer to whisk the flour into the cold liquid until smooth, then the egg, then heat while stirring constantly; egg dropped into hot liquid will scramble into threads.
- Quantities, which are absentNo amounts are given at all. A workable ratio is 1 cup milk plus 1 cup water, 2 tablespoons flour, 1 egg, and 4 oz dried beef. That serves two generously over toast.
- Freshening the beefPackaged dried beef can be very salty, and the recipe already allows for freshening. Pour hot water over it, let it stand a minute, drain and pat dry. Salt the sauce only after tasting the finished dish.
- Slicing"As thin as possible" matters because thickness is what makes the beef chewy. Packaged chipped beef is already paper thin; if working from a whole dried piece, chill it firm and shave it against the grain, then tear into bite-size shreds.
- Half milk, half waterThe water may simply be economy, or a way of keeping the sauce from being over-rich or over-salted; the recipe does not say. All milk gives a richer sauce and the beef's own salt still seasons it, as the recipe notes. Cream will curdle less readily than milk if the pan runs hot.
- ServingThe recipe says nothing about serving; creamed dried beef was commonly eaten over buttered toast, split biscuits or boiled potatoes, with plenty of black pepper.
Dried beef is one of the oldest keeping meats in the American larder: lean beef salted, sometimes smoked, and dried hard enough to shave into flakes, which is why it is also called chipped or smoked beef. Creamed chipped beef became a fixture of army and boarding-house breakfasts and acquired an unprintable nickname among American servicemen in the twentieth century. The garbled mushroom heading at the top of this entry looks like a printing or compositing slip.