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Soup

Whole Beef-tea

A soup made by simmering beef with optional aromatics and Worcestershire sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,668 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

Whole Beef-tea

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove all fat, sinew, veins, and bone from the beef.

  2. Cut the beef into pieces smaller than ½ inch.

  3. Soak the beef in ⅓ of the water for 12 hours.

Make the tea

  1. Simmer the soaked beef in the remaining 2⅔ cups of water for 2 hours, replacing lost water as needed.

  2. Pour the boiling liquid over the cold soaking liquid.

  3. Dry the solid meat, pound it in a mortar, and mix it with the liquid.

Season

  1. For flavor, add fresh tomato, celery, onion, cloves, or Worcestershire sauce.

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. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh beef
Provides the meaty flavor and the dissolved protein that gives the tea its body.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 2 hours. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer extracts flavor without making the broth cloudy, while replacing lost water keeps the meat covered and the flavor concentrated. A hard boil breaks up fat and proteins into the liquid and reduces it too quickly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, celery, clove, sauce. 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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