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New Way of Making Beef Tea

A clear beef tea made by simmering diced beef, butter, clove, onion, and salt in boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

New Way of Making Beef Tea

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a stewpan, combine the diced beef, butter, clove, sliced onion, and salt.

  2. Stir the mixture over medium heat for 10 minutes until it produces a thick gravy.

  3. Add the boiling water and let it simmer on low heat for 30 minutes, skimming off any fat.

  4. Pass the mixture through a sieve to remove solids.

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 + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. 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 meaty flavor and dissolves into the liquid to give the tea its body.
Butter
Carries fat-soluble aroma from the beef and onion and adds richness to the broth.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it cooks into the gravy.

The step that matters

Stir over medium heat until a thick gravy forms. Browning the beef and onion in butter builds deeper savory flavor through the Maillard reaction. Too little heat or time leaves the base pale and flat, while overheating can scorch the butter and solids.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, onion):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Pepperfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, onion. 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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