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Beef Tea

A broth made by simmering beef, water, salt, pepper, optional celery salt or butter, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Beef Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Remove all fat from the beef and cut it into very small pieces.

  2. Place the beef in a double boiler and cover it with cold water.

  3. Simmer gently for 2 to 3 hours.

  4. Strain the mixture through a coarse strainer.

Season and finish

  1. Season with salt and pepper, and add celery salt or butter if desired.

  2. Beat the eggs and gradually stir them into the beef tea or broth while mixing continuously.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Beef + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Pepper and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the meat flavour and dissolved protein that give the broth its body.
Cold water
Extracts flavour and gelatin from the beef as it heats slowly.
Eggs
Add richness and help clarify the broth when stirred in and heated.

The step that matters

Stirring the beaten eggs into the broth. Adding eggs gradually while stirring continuously keeps them from curdling into lumps. Egg proteins set when heated, so the broth must be stirred steadily as the eggs are added.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, egg. 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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