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
The book gives no oven temperature. The 150°F (65°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Remove all fat and gristle from the beef and cut it into very small pieces.
Place the beef in a jar and pour the water over it.
Add salt and the clove, then let it sit for 2 hours, stirring and pressing with a spoon to extract the juice.
Heat
Place the jar in a saucepan with boiling water, ensuring the water comes up to within 3 inches of the jar's top.
Keep the water gently boiling until the beef tea reaches 150°F (65°C), ensuring it does not exceed this temperature.
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.
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Beef + clovetop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Supplies the meat juices that give the tea its flavour and body.
- Water
- Draws juices out of the beef and forms the liquid base of the tea.
The step that matters
Keep the water gently boiling until the beef tea reaches 150°F (65°C). Gentle heat extracts flavour without toughening or clouding the liquid; a hard boil that pushes the tea above the target temperature can make it cloudy and less delicate.
“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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