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Whole Beef-Tea

A clear beef broth made by simmering beef with optional aromatics and Worcestershire sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,668 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

Whole Beef-Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove all fat and skin from the beef.

  2. Cut the beef into 1-inch pieces.

  3. Place the beef in ⅓ cup of cold water.

  4. Let it sit for a few hours or overnight.

Simmer and strain

  1. Transfer the beef and water to a saucepan with the remaining 1¼ cups of water.

  2. Simmer for 2 hours.

  3. Strain the liquid into a bowl, discarding the beef pieces.

Finish

  1. Chop or pound the beef finely.

  2. Add the chopped beef back to the hot beef tea.

  3. Flavor with celery, onion, cloves, and Worcestershire sauce as desired.

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. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. 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

Beef
Provides the meaty flavor and, as it simmers, gelatin-like body to the liquid.
Water
Extracts flavor and soluble protein from the beef, forming the tea itself.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and mild sweetness to the broth when used.

The step that matters

Simmer for 2 hours. A gentle simmer extracts flavor and body from the beef while keeping the liquid clearer. Boiling hard breaks up the proteins and fat, making the tea cloudy and greasy.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, clove, sauce):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Cuminfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, clove, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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