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Drink

Beef Tea, Raw

A beverage made by steeping finely scraped lean beef in cold water, then straining and optionally sweetening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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, Raw

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Lay the beef on a clean surface and scrape it finely with a knife, discarding fat and skin.

  2. Place the scraped beef in a glass jar and add cold water.

Steep and strain

  1. Cover and let it stand for about 30 minutes or as directed by a doctor.

  2. Strain the mixture, pressing the meat to extract the juice, or wring it in muslin.

Serve

  1. Serve warm or chilled, optionally sweetened with sugar.

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 + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Meat + sugartop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Beef + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the meat juice that gives the tea its flavour and nourishment.
Cold water
Draws out the soluble juices from the scraped meat without cooking it.

The step that matters

Scraping the beef finely. Fine scraping exposes more meat surface, so more juice can be drawn into the cold water during standing. Coarse pieces release less juice and leave the tea weak.

“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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