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Dessert

Beef Tea Custard

A custard made with beef tea, egg yolks, egg white, and salt, steamed in a cup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and tea work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 417 recipes. Both carry 2-methyl-3-(methyldithio)furan, which smells thiamin, meat. The science ↓

Beef Tea Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the egg yolks and egg white together until well combined.

  2. Pour the beef tea into the egg mixture and season with salt.

  3. Grease a cup and pour the mixture into it.

  4. Cover the cup with greased paper.

Steam and serve

  1. Place the cup in a saucepan with a little boiling water.

  2. Steam gently for about 20 minutes.

  3. Carefully turn out the custard.

  4. Serve hot or cold, or cut into dice and serve in broth or soup.

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 + teatop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methyl-3-(methyldithio)furan (thiamin, meat).

  2. Beef + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Tea + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together821 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Set the custard into a firm, tender texture when gently heated.
Egg white
Adds protein that helps the custard set and hold its shape.
Beef tea
Supplies the liquid and savoury beef flavour that the custard is built on.

The step that matters

Steam gently for about 20 minutes. Egg custard turns grainy, watery, or full of holes if it boils or cooks too fast. Gentle steam heats the egg proteins slowly so they set smoothly and evenly.

“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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