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Quick Beef-tea

A quick beef broth made by finely grinding beef and simmering it in water, then seasoning with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Quick Beef-tea

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grind the beef or chop it very finely.

  2. Place the beef in a bowl and cover with cold water.

  3. Set the bowl in a saucepan of cold water and bring to a boil.

Cook and serve

  1. Once boiling, cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  2. Strain the mixture through a coarse sieve.

  3. Add salt and pepper to taste.

  4. If the beef-tea is too strong, add a little more water and cook again.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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

Beef
Provides the meaty flavour and the dissolved protein and savour that make up the broth.
Cold water
Draws flavour and juices out of the finely chopped beef as it heats gently.

The step that matters

Bringing the bowl to a boil in the saucepan. Heating gradually in a water bath keeps the liquid from boiling hard around the beef. Gentle heat extracts flavour while keeping the broth clear and avoiding a greasy, cloudy result.

“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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