Why it works: Beef and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,462 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓
Beef Tea
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the beef
Remove all fat from the beef and cut it into small pieces, scoring them to release the juices.
Cook
Place the beef in a jar with salt, clove, peppercorns, and cold water. Tie the jar securely and immerse it in a saucepan of water. Boil gently for 2½ hours.
Strain and finish
Strain the mixture and remove any fat from the surface using silver paper or stale bread. Optionally, add boiled rice or tapioca.
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.
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Beef + clovetop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Fresh beef
- Provides the meat flavour and savoury body that makes up the broth.
- Cold water
- Slowly draws juices and flavour out of the beef as it heats gently.
The step that matters
Boil gently for 2½ hours. A rolling boil would toughen the meat and cloud the liquid. Gentle heat in a sealed jar, set in simmering water, extracts flavour slowly and keeps the broth clear.
“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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