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Dried Beef with Cream
¼ lb. smoked dried beef, thinly sliced 1 cup scalded cream 1½ tablespoons flour Remove skin and separate meat in pieces, cover with hot water, let stand ten minutes, and drain. Dilute flour with enough cold water to pour easily, making a smooth paste; add to cream, and cook in double boiler ten minutes. Add beef, and reheat. One cup White Sauce I may be used in place of cream, omitting the salt.
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A frugal chafing-dish standby from Fannie Farmer's kitchen, built on air-dried salted beef that arrives already very salty. The quantity of beef as printed has lost its fraction — a quarter pound is the sensible reading for one cup of cream.
- The hinge: soak, then tasteThe ten-minute soak in hot water is what makes the dish edible rather than a salt lick. Modern packaged chipped beef varies enormously in saltiness; drain, taste a shred, and give it a second soak if it still bites. Add no salt at any stage.
- Beef quantityRead it as ¼ lb (about 4 oz) sliced dried beef to 1 cup cream. Today that means a jar or vacuum pack of chipped beef, sliced paper-thin; a whole air-dried muscle with skin to remove is now a specialty item.
- Scalded creamHeat cream just until it steams and shivers at the edges, around 180F, not to a boil. Here it simply gets the cream hot before thickening.
- Double boilerThe ten minutes over water is insurance against scorching a thin cream sauce. A heavy saucepan over low heat with steady whisking does the same in less time; cook until the flour taste is gone and the sauce coats a spoon.
- Flour pasteSlaking the flour in cold water is a nineteenth-century alternative to a butter roux and works, but strain the paste or whisk hard as it goes in — lumps are the usual failure. About 1½ tablespoons flour to 1 cup liquid gives a lightly thickened sauce, between thin and medium.
- White Sauce IThe book's own basic milk-and-flour sauce. Use it unsalted, as the recipe directs, when cream is not on hand.
- Yield and servingServes two generously, three at a stretch, over buttered toast, split baking-powder biscuits, or boiled potatoes. Black pepper and a little grated nutmeg or a spoonful of sherry at the end are period-appropriate additions.
Smoked dried beef — thin salt-cured slices of round, air-dried and lightly smoked — was a keeping meat long before refrigeration, sold loose from a hanging chunk that the grocer shaved by hand, which is why the recipe opens by telling you to remove the skin. Creamed on toast it belonged to the same family of cheap, quick, chafing-dish suppers that Fannie Farmer's readers were expected to produce for a late meal or an invalid tray, and it survived into the twentieth century in institutional and military messes under the crude nickname it is still known by among American servicemen.