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Savoury Beef Tea

A savory beef broth made by simmering shredded beef with water, carrots, turnip, onion, herbs, parsley, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Savoury Beef Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove fat from the beef and shred the meat or mince it.

  2. Place the shredded beef, water, and vegetables into a jar.

  3. Cover the jar and tie it down with paper.

Simmer and strain

  1. Put the jar in a saucepan of boiling water and simmer gently for three hours.

  2. Strain the mixture and remove all grease.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Gravy beef
Provides the meat flavour and dissolved protein that give the tea its body and savour.
Cold water
Slowly extracts flavour and soluble compounds from the beef and vegetables during gentle cooking.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury depth to the broth.
Carrot
Adds mild sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer gently in the jar. Gentle heat over a long time draws flavour out of the meat without toughening it or clouding the liquid. A hard boil can make the broth cloudy and greasy, so keep the saucepan at a low simmer for the full three hours.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, parsley):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, parsley. 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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