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Beef-Tea Custard

Custard made with eggs, beef tea, and salt, steamed in buttered cups.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 the custard

  1. In a bowl, combine the yolks of 2 eggs and the white of 1 egg.

  2. Gradually add ½ pint of beef tea and ¼ teaspoon of salt.

  3. Butter two small cups or tins and pour the custard mixture into them.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover the cups with buttered paper and place them in a saucepan of boiling water.

  2. Steam for 15 to 20 minutes, ensuring the water comes halfway up the cups and is boiling when you place them in.

  3. Serve hot or cold; the custards will turn out in shape.

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

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

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Tea + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together703 recipes

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

  5. Egg + beeftop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks and white set the custard, giving it a firm, sliceable structure when steamed.
Beef-tea
Supplies the liquid and savoury flavour that the eggs set into the custard.

The step that matters

Steam for 15 to 20 minutes with boiling water. Egg proteins set gently as the custard heats. Water that is already boiling and reaches halfway up the cups keeps the heat steady and even, so the custards set firm without becoming rough or watery.

“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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