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Soup

Beef Tea for Invalids

A broth made from beef and veal simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and veal are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,784 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Beef Tea for Invalids

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the jar

  1. Place the beef and veal in a wide-mouthed jar.

  2. Pour the cold water or wine over the meat.

  3. Add the salt and mace if using.

  4. Cork the jar tightly and cover it with a bladder.

Cook and strain

  1. Submerge the jar in a deep saucepan of cold water, ensuring the water does not cover the cork.

  2. Slowly boil for four hours or more.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

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 + vealtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  2. Veal + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,761 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Veal + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together698 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  4. Beef + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethylphenol (must).

  5. Wine + macetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the main meaty flavour and dissolves gelatin into the broth as it cooks.
Veal
Adds body and gelatin, giving the broth a richer, silkier mouthfeel.
Cold water or wine
Acts as the liquid that extracts flavour and gelatin from the meat during slow cooking.

The step that matters

Keeping the water in the saucepan from covering the cork. The jar must be sealed yet kept out of the boiling water so the broth stays free of outside water and cooks gently in its own steam and juices. Slow, sustained heat extracts flavour and gelatin, while a rolling boil would make the broth cloudy and greasy.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, wine):

  1. Rosemaryfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Pepperfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, wine. 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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