Skip to main content
Drink

Beef Tea

A tea made by simmering beef pieces with salt and water, optionally adding egg and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,495 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Beef Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine beef pieces and salt; let stand for 30 minutes.

  2. Add cold water to the beef and let it stand for 4 hours.

  3. Heat the mixture slowly on the back of the stove.

  4. Simmer for 30 minutes, then strain the liquid.

Finish and serve

  1. If desired, beat the egg and stir it gradually into a cup of the tea to avoid curdling, then add nutmeg.

  2. Serve hot.

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 + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,495 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Beef + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the flavor and savory body of the tea as its juices are extracted into the water.
Egg
Adds richness and body to the tea when beaten in, and gently thickens it when heated.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg into the tea. Adding beaten egg gradually to a small portion of hot tea, rather than all at once, helps prevent it from curdling and keeps the drink smooth.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, egg):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Pepperfits about as well
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, egg. 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.

More beef tea recipes

Raw 21Jelly 12Custard 6Pudding 6Cold 5with Egg 4 See all 396 →

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes