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Toulaine Beef Extract

A method for extracting beef blood into a liquid using steak, butter, salt, milk, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Toulaine Beef Extract

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 100°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the steak

  1. Remove any fat from the steak and wipe it with a wet cloth.

  2. Heat a pan over high heat and quickly sear the steak to keep the blood in.

  3. Before removing the steak from the pan, smear it with a little butter and a dash of coarse sea salt.

Extract the blood

  1. Cut the steak into small pieces that fit into a lemon squeezer.

  2. Press out the blood into a preheated small cup and serve immediately.

Make the milk whey

  1. Warm the milk to just above blood heat (about 100°F or 38°C).

  2. Pour the sherry wine into the warm milk.

  3. Let the mixture sit until the albumen coagulates, then strain without squeezing the curd.

  4. For quick whey, heat the milk to boiling before adding the wine.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  5. Milk + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (fenugreek, curry).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean round steak
Provides the blood-rich meat that is pressed to yield the extract.
Milk
Serves as the base that the sherry wine curdles into whey.
Sherry wine
Acidity causes the milk proteins to coagulate and separate into curd and whey.

The step that matters

Searing the steak quickly over high heat. A brief, hot sear firms the outside of the meat so less blood escapes before pressing. Overcooking it would cook the meat through and reduce the blood you can extract.

“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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