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Beef Tea

A simple beef broth made by simmering beef with optional vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Beef Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Remove all fat, sinew, veins, and bone from the beef.

  2. Cut the beef into pieces smaller than ½ inch and soak in ½ pint of cold water for 12 hours.

Make the soup

  1. Simmer the soaked beef in 1 pint of water for 2 hours, replacing lost water as needed.

  2. Combine the boiling liquid with the cold soaking liquid.

  3. Dry the solid meat, pound it in a mortar, and mix it with the liquid.

  4. For added flavor, boil in fresh tomato, a piece of green celery, a small onion, or a few cloves.

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. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  2. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Fresh beef
Provides the main body and meaty flavor of the soup.
Water
Extracts flavor and gelatin from the beef and forms the soup base.

The step that matters

Soaking the beef in cold water. Soaking the cut beef in cold water for 12 hours lets some of its flavor and soluble proteins leach into the liquid, and starting the simmer from cold helps keep the broth clear and well flavored.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, celery, onion, clove):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, celery, onion, clove. 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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