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Beef-tea, No. 2

A simple beef broth made by simmering beef pieces in water with optional aromatics.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beef-tea, No. 2

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the beef pieces in a jar and cover with cold water.

  2. Add lemon peel, celery, or spice if desired.

Cook and strain

  1. Set the jar in a saucepan of water and bring to a gentle simmer.

  2. Cook for about 3 hours, or longer if needed.

  3. Strain the mixture and set aside for use.

  4. Do not add salt until ready to serve.

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. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  2. Beef + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Beef + celerytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Meat + celerytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,880 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  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 flavour and dissolved protein that give the tea its body and savoury taste.
Cold water
Extracts flavour and soluble compounds from the beef slowly as it heats, without toughening the meat.

The step that matters

Keep the simmer gentle. A hard boil makes the meat proteins contract and cloud the liquid, toughening the beef and giving a murky, greasy tea. A slow simmer over the long cook draws out flavour more cleanly.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, meat, celery):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, celery. 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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