Why it works: Beef and meat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,533 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓
Beef-Tea
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the beef
Shred the beef very finely and place it in a jar.
Add the cold water and stir well; let it stand for 2 hours, stirring occasionally.
Cover the jar with buttered paper, twisting it firmly to prevent slipping.
Cook and strain
Place the jar in a pan of boiling water, ensuring the water comes within 2 inches of the jar's top.
Simmer the water for 1 hour.
Remove the jar, stir the beef-tea well, and strain it through a coarse strainer, pressing out all the liquid.
Remove the fat by lightly passing soft paper over the surface.
Season and serve
Stir in the Liebig Company's Extract of Meat, add the salt, and serve with dry toast.
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.
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Beef + meattop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,533 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Lean beef
- Provides the main flavour and the protein-rich liquid once its juices are drawn out.
- Liebig company's extract of meat
- Adds concentrated meat flavour to the finished tea.
The step that matters
Covering the jar and gentle simmering. The jar must be sealed with buttered paper and the water kept at a simmer, not a hard boil. This lets the beef release its juices slowly into the water without the liquid turning cloudy or the beef toughening.
“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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