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Beef Tea

A clear beef broth made by simmering finely chopped beef in cold water, then straining and cooling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,370 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Beef Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cover the chopped beef with cold water and let it sit for 1 hour.

  2. Heat the mixture in a jar in the oven or on the back of the stove until it reaches 165°F (74°C).

  3. Strain through a colander.

Cool and skim

  1. Let it cool in a cold place to allow fat to rise to the surface.

  2. Remove any fat with a clean piece of blotting paper or in a solid cake if there is much.

Serve

  1. Serve salted to taste.

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 + celerytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Round of beef
Supplies the meat flavour and dissolved protein and gelatin that give the tea its body.
Cold water
Slowly draws flavour and soluble compounds out of the chopped meat without cooking it first.

The step that matters

Heating to 165°F (74°C). Heating the meat-water mixture only to this point extracts flavour while keeping the liquid clear and gently cooked. Overheating can toughen and cloud the broth.

“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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