Name: Beef Tea
Ingredients: 1 pound lean raw beef; 1 pint cold water; 10 drops hydrochloric acid

Beef Tea

Ingredients

1 pound lean raw beef
1 pint cold water
10 drops hydrochloric acid

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 160°F (70°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Chop the beef into small pieces, about ¼ inch in diameter.
Soak the chopped beef in cold water for 5 to 6 hours.
Add the hydrochloric acid to the beef and water mixture.

Heat

Gradually heat the mixture to 160°F (70°C) for 15 to 30 minutes using a water bath.
Ensure the inner vessel does not boil by preventing evaporation.

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

What each ingredient does

Lean raw beef: Provides the meat protein and flavor that the broth is built from.
Cold water: Extracts soluble compounds from the chopped beef into the liquid.
Hydrochloric acid: Acidifies the liquid, which helps draw flavor and nutrients out of the meat.

The step that matters

Gradually heat the mixture to 160°F (70°C) without boiling. Gentle, sustained heat in a water bath keeps the liquid below a boil so the broth stays clear and the meat does not toughen. Boiling would cloud the broth and push out fat and fine particles, and evaporation would concentrate it unevenly.

“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.