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Beef Tea

A clear beef broth made by simmering beef in cold water, seasoned with salt, pepper, lemon juice, cream, and optionally an egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Beef Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Trim the fat from the beef and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Place the beef in a Mason jar and cover it with cold water.

Extract the broth

  1. Put the jar in a kettle of cold water with a trivet or two sticks at the bottom to prevent cracking.

  2. Heat the kettle slowly until the juice is extracted from the meat, which will become colorless and tasteless.

  3. Pour off the liquid and let it cool.

  4. Remove all fat.

  5. Store the beef tea in a cool place and use as needed.

Season and serve

  1. Serve hot or cold.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, lemon juice, or cream.

  3. Add a well-beaten egg to one cup of the 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.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Beef + lemontop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,278 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Round of beef
Provides the meat juices that are extracted to make the broth's flavor.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, rounder mouthfeel to the finished broth.

The step that matters

Heat the kettle slowly. Gentle, slow heating draws the juices out of the meat gradually; rapid heating toughens the meat and can crack the jar, and the broth may turn cloudy.

“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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