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Beef Tea

A custard-like dish made with beef tea, eggs, grated bread, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,032 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Beef Tea

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Soak the grated bread in the beef tea for a few minutes.

  2. Beat the eggs and add them along with a pinch of salt.

  3. Pour the mixture into a small dish.

Bake or steam

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 15 minutes or steam gently for 30 minutes until firm.

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 + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

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

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  4. Tea + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together383 recipes

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

  5. Beef + eggtop 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
Set and firm up when heated, giving the dish its structure.
Weak beef tea
Provides the liquid and savory beef flavor that the custard carries.
Grated bread
Soaks up the beef tea and helps give the set mixture a softer body.

The step that matters

Bake or steam until firm. Eggs set when heated, and heating too hard or too long can make the custard grainy, spongy or watery. Cook gently and stop as soon as it is firm in the centre.

“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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