Skip to main content
Drink

Delicious Beef- Tea

A beef tea made by steeping beef, salt, parsley, and celery leaves in water, then simmering for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Delicious Beef- Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the prepared beef into a clean bottle.

  2. Add salt, parsley, and celery leaves.

  3. Pour in the cold water.

Cook

  1. Cork the bottle tightly and place it in a pot of lukewarm water.

  2. Gradually bring the water to a boil.

  3. Boil for 3 to 4 hours; it can be used after 2 hours but is better if cooked longer.

Strain and serve

  1. Uncork, strain, and serve with toast.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Celery + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Parsley + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 gelatin that the slow cooking draws into the liquid.
Cold water
Slowly draws flavor out of the meat and carries it into the tea.
Celery leaves
Adds a fresh, herbal aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Gradually bring the water to a boil. Heating slowly while the bottle stays corked and sealed in lukewarm water lets the meat release its juices gently. Rapid heating can toughen the meat and make the tea less clear.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, beef):

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Pepperfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Rosemaryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, beef. 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.

More beef tea recipes

Raw 21Jelly 12Custard 6Pudding 6Cold 5with Egg 4 See all 396 →

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes