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Beef-tea

A slow‑cooked beef broth made by shredding beef, simmering in water, and straining.

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

Why it works: Beef and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,448 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef-tea

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Shred the beef very finely.

  2. Put the beef into a teapot with cold water and salt.

  3. Simmer the pot on the hob for at least 3 hours without boiling.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain the mixture.

  2. Dry the solid residue. Remove stringy parts. Pound the residue.

  3. Stir it back into the beef tea.

  4. Flavor with fresh tomato, mace, or a bay leaf if desired.

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. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  2. Beef + macetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,969 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Tomato + macetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together467 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the meaty flavour and, once simmered, the body of the broth.
Cold water
Slowly extracts the beef's juices and flavour when heated gently rather than boiled.

The step that matters

Simmer without boiling. Keeping the pot at a gentle simmer for hours draws out flavour gradually while keeping the broth clear. A rolling boil would toughen the meat and cloud the liquid.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Onionfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, mace. 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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