Why it works: Beef and port wine work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 626 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓
Beef Tea
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Cut the beef into small pieces and place in a jar or basin.
Add enough cold water to cover the beef and let it sit for at least 30 minutes.
Cook
Stir the mixture and place the jar in a saucepan with cold water reaching halfway up the jar.
Cover the pan and boil slowly for 3 hours, adding more cold water if necessary.
Strain and serve
After cooking, remove the jar, stir the beef tea, and strain through a coarse strainer.
Press the meat with a wooden spoon to extract as much liquid as possible.
Remove any grease from the top using soft white paper before serving.
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.
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Beef + port winetop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together626 recipes
Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Beef
- Provides the flavour and the dissolved protein and juices that make up the tea.
- Cold water
- Extracts the meat's juices slowly, giving a clear, flavourful liquid.
The step that matters
Boil slowly for 3 hours. A gentle simmer draws out flavour without toughening the meat or clouding the liquid. Vigorous boiling can make the tea cloudy and greasy, and the water level must be kept up so the jar does not dry out.
“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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