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Drink

Beer Tea

A chilled beef broth served with pine, lemon, and biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pine and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 480 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beer Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Make the beef broth

  1. Place the beef in a jar without any water and cover tightly.

  2. Set the jar in a pot of cold water and heat gradually to a boil.

  3. Maintain a steady boil for three to four hours until the meat is tender and the juice is extracted.

Season and serve

  1. Season with coarse sea salt to taste and let it cool.

  2. Skim off any fat that rises to the top.

  3. Serve chilled with pine and lemon, alongside Albert biscuits or thin wafers.

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. Pine + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together480 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pine + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  3. Lemon + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Beef + biscuittop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together197 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Beef + lemontop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,278 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the meat whose juice is extracted to make the drink's flavour and body.

The step that matters

Maintain a steady boil for three to four hours. The jar must stay in gently boiling water long enough for the meat to become tender and release its juice. Heating too quickly or letting the water stop boiling can leave the meat tough and the juice weak.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pine, biscuit. 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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