Why it works: Beef and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,448 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓
Beef-tea in Haste
Ingredients
Directions
Make the beef tea
Scrape the beef into fibers using a dull knife.
Place the scraped meat in a clean saucepan and pour boiling water over it.
Cover the saucepan and let it sit by the fire for 10 minutes.
Strain the mixture into a teacup.
Skim and serve
Place the teacup in a basin of ice-cold water and remove any fat from the surface.
Pour the beef tea into a warm cup and serve.
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 + tomatotop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,448 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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 flavor and the dissolved protein that gives the tea its body.
- Boiling water
- Extracts flavor and soluble compounds from the scraped meat into the liquid.
The step that matters
Skimming the fat after chilling. Fat floats on the surface of the hot liquid and makes it greasy. Chilling the cup in ice-cold water solidifies the fat so it can be lifted off cleanly before serving.
“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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