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Drink

Beep Tea

A clear beef tea made with small beef pieces, arrowroot, and sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and arrowroot work together. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 155 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Beep Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the beef into very small pieces and remove all the fat.

Make the tea

  1. Put the fat into 1 quart of cold water and boil it down to 1 pint.

  2. Strain the liquid and add a little salt.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a bowl, beat together the arrowroot and sweet cream until very light.

  2. Bring the tea to a boil, then stir in the cream and arrowroot mixture, but do not let it boil afterwards.

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. Beef + arrowroottop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together155 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  2. Arrowroot + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Beef + creamtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main meaty flavour and body of the tea.
Arrowroot
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells with heat, giving a smooth body.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a mild, silky mouthfeel to the tea.

The step that matters

Do not let the tea boil after adding the cream and arrowroot. Starch thickeners like arrowroot lose their thickening power and can break down when kept boiling, and cream can separate or curdle at a hard boil. Holding the tea just below boiling keeps it smooth and thick.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, cream):

  1. Onionfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, cream. 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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