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Beef Tea

A clear beef broth made by simmering beef, salt, clove, peppercorns, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,462 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Beef Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Remove all fat from the beef and cut it into small pieces, about the size of a fingertip.

  2. Score the beef to release the juices and place it in a jar.

  3. Add salt, clove, peppercorns, and cold water to the jar.

  4. Tie the top of the jar securely.

Cook and finish

  1. Immerse the jar in a saucepan of water.

  2. Boil gently for 2½ hours.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Remove any fat from the surface using silver paper or stale bread.

  5. Optionally, add boiled rice or tapioca.

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 + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the meat flavour and the juices that give the broth its body.
Cold water
Extracts flavour and gelatine from the beef as it heats slowly.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 2½ hours. A gentle simmer keeps the broth clear, while a hard boil would make it cloudy and emulsify fat into it. Sealing the jar in a water bath keeps the liquid from reducing.

“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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