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Drink

Beef Tea

A simple beef infusion made by simmering beef in water and straining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Beef Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the beef in a bottle with a large opening.

  2. Add the cold water and cork the bottle tightly.

  3. Set the bottle in a basin of cold water on the fire.

Heat and finish

  1. Heat until it reaches a boiling point, but do not boil.

  2. Maintain this temperature for two hours.

  3. Strain the mixture and season with salt.

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the meat flavor and dissolved savoury compounds that make up the tea's body.
Cold water
Extracts flavour and soluble compounds from the beef slowly as it warms.

The step that matters

Heat until it reaches a boiling point, but do not boil.. Gentle heat held just below boiling extracts flavour from the meat without toughening or clouding the liquid. Boiling would coagulate proteins and make the tea cloudy and less 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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