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Soup

Beef-Tea

A clear beef broth made by simmering lean meat, carrot, celery seed, salt, and pepper in cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Beef-Tea

Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Beef-Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into thin slices.

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

Make the broth

  1. Heat over low fire until warm, skimming off any scum that rises.

  2. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

  3. Strain through a fine sieve and let it stand for 10 minutes to settle.

  4. Pour off the clear tea and season with salt, black pepper, celery seed, and add the carrot for flavor.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Meat + celerytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,880 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Meat + carrottop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,905 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 meat
Gives the broth its main beef flavor as it simmers in the water.
Cold water
Extracts flavor and dissolves the meat's juices gradually when heated slowly.

The step that matters

Heat over low fire and skim off the scum. Heating slowly and removing the foam that rises keeps the broth clear and free of impurities. Boiling hard would cloud it and emulsify fat into the liquid.

“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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