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Beef, Mutton, or Veal Tea

A clear broth made by simmering lean meat with water, optional onion, and black pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Beef, Mutton, or Veal Tea

Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef, Mutton, or Veal Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cut the meat into thin slices.

  2. Place the meat in a pot with the cold water.

  3. Heat over a gentle fire until warm.

  4. When scum rises, let it simmer gently for about 1 hour. Optionally, add an onion and a few grains of black pepper while simmering.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain through a fine sieve or napkin.

  2. Let it stand for 10 minutes to settle, then pour off the clear tea.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Meat + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean gravy meat
Provides the flavour and body of the broth as its juices and gelatin release into the water.
Cold water
Extracts the meat's flavour slowly when started cold and heated gently.

The step that matters

Heating gently and skimming scum. Simmering gently keeps the broth clear, because a hard boil breaks up proteins and fat into the liquid, making it cloudy.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper. 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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