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Beef Tea

A clear broth made by simmering beef in water with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove all fat from the beef and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Place the beef in an earthen pot and add the cold water.

  3. Cover the pot and let it soak for 1 hour.

Simmer and serve

  1. Simmer gently for 2 hours until the strength is extracted from the beef.

  2. Strain the mixture and season with salt and pepper.

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 + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Supplies the meat flavor and dissolved proteins that give the broth its taste and body.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. Keeping the pot at a gentle simmer extracts flavor without a hard boil. Vigorous boiling breaks fat and proteins into the liquid, making the broth cloudy and the meat tough.

“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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