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Beef Tea and Egg

A simple dish of hot beef tea poured over beaten egg yolk, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,032 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Beef Tea and Egg

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the egg yolk in a teacup and season lightly with salt and pepper if desired.

  2. Heat the beef tea in a saucepan, but do not let it boil.

  3. Pour the hot beef tea over the egg yolk while stirring briskly.

  4. Serve immediately with thin strips of toasted bread.

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 + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Beef + teatop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methyl-3-(methyldithio)furan (thiamin, meat).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Tea + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together383 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef tea
Provides the main savory liquid and beefy flavor of the dish.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and a silky, lightly thickened texture as it blends into the hot liquid.
Toasted bread
Adds crisp, dry contrast to the soft, warm liquid.

The step that matters

Pour the hot beef tea over the egg yolk while stirring briskly. Stirring spreads the heat so the yolk warms gradually and blends smoothly instead of scrambling into lumps.

“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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