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Creamed Frizzled Beef
1/2 pound sliced dried beef 1 tablespoon butter 3 tablespoons flour Buttered toast 1/2 cup cold water 1½ cup milk 1 egg Pick the meat over carefully, removing all gristle and breaking it into small bits. If very salty bring to a boil in a little water and drain. Melt the butter in a frying pan; throw in the beef and stir it with a fork until it is cooked, but not browned. Remove the pan from the hottest part of the stove; sift the flour over the meat, stirring all the time; add the cold water and continue stirring until all the water has been absorbed. Then draw the pan to the hot part of the stove and add the milk. Bring all to a boil; add the beaten egg and serve at once on small slices of buttered toast. The egg may be omitted if preferred.
A wood-stove-era version of what later generations called chipped beef on toast. The method is a roux made in two stages, with cold water first and milk after, which keeps it lump-free.
- The hinge: cold water before milkSifting flour over the fat-coated meat and then adding cold water away from the hottest part of the stove is what prevents lumps. Stir until the water is fully absorbed and the mixture is smooth before the milk goes in.
- Stove positions mean burner heat"The hottest part of the stove" and "the hot part" refer to zones on a cast-iron range top. Read them as: move the pan to a cooler spot to add the flour and water, then return it to a hotter spot for the milk.
- The dried beefAir-dried salt beef sliced paper-thin; supermarket jarred or packaged chipped beef is the direct descendant, though it is usually milder and wetter than the older product. The boil-and-drain step is still worth doing if you taste a slice and it stings.
- Egg into boiling sauceBeat the egg first, then dribble it into the boiling sauce while stirring hard, or it will scramble in threads. It thickens and enriches rather than binds; the recipe is right that it can simply be left out.
- Flour quantityThree tablespoons of flour to a cup and a half of milk plus half a cup of water gives a medium-bodied gravy, with the egg thickening it further. If you want it looser, hold back a tablespoon.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; half a pound of beef and two cups of sauce should stretch to three or four servings over toast, fewer if it is the whole meal. Have the toast buttered and waiting; the sauce sets up quickly as it cools.
Dried or "chipped" beef was a staple of American pantries long before refrigeration, salt-cured and air-dried into slices that kept for months and could be shaved thin as paper. Creaming it in a milk gravy and spooning it over toast turned a cheap preserved meat into a hot supper or breakfast dish, and household manuals of the period recommended it for exactly that reason: it needs no fresh meat, no oven, and about ten minutes. The dish later became so firmly attached to American military mess halls that soldiers gave it the barracks nickname it is still known by, but in Mrs. Fryer's book it is simply a sensible way to feed a family from the shelf. The optional egg is a common turn-of-the-century touch, stretching and enriching a sauce.