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Creamed Dried Beef
Frizzle the dried beef in frying pan with butter or margarine. Add flour enough to make paste. Let bubble. Gradually add milk, stirring smooth, until of right consistency. Season if necessary. Just before serving, add one beaten egg. Serve on potatoes, biscuits or toast points.
A cream-sauce dish with no measurements at all, written for cooks who made white sauce by eye. Here are the proportions and the details the text assumes you already know.
- Working proportionsThe recipe gives none. For four servings, about 4 oz dried beef, 3 tablespoons butter, 3 tablespoons flour and 2 cups milk works; that is on the thin side of a medium sauce, so add another spoonful of flour if you want it to cling to toast.
- "Frizzle"Means to fry the shredded beef in the fat until the edges curl and crisp, two to three minutes over medium heat. It concentrates the meat's flavour and is what makes the sauce taste of beef rather than of milk.
- Dried beef todaySold sliced in jars or vacuum packs, sometimes labelled chipped beef. It is heavily salted; if it tastes aggressive, cover with boiling water for a minute and drain before frizzling.
- "Let bubble"Cook the flour and fat together a full minute so the raw flour taste goes. It should froth, not brown.
- The beaten eggOff the heat, or at the barest simmer. Temper it with a few spoonfuls of hot sauce first, then stir it back in. Added straight to a boiling pan it scrambles and the sauce turns grainy.
- Seasoning"If necessary" is doing real work here. The beef usually supplies all the salt; taste before adding any, and finish with black pepper.
- ServingToast points are bread toasted and cut corner to corner; "on potatoes" would mean over mashed, boiled or baked potatoes. Serves four as a supper dish on the proportions above.
Creamed dried beef on toast is one of the great American economy dishes: air-dried salted beef kept without refrigeration, and a flour-and-milk sauce stretched a few ounces of it across a family. It travelled through army mess halls in both world wars, where it acquired the barracks nickname that polite cookbooks never printed. The beaten egg at the end is a small refinement, enriching and slightly thickening a sauce that would otherwise be plain milk and flour.