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Beef Broth or Tea

A simple beef broth or tea made by simmering beef in water and seasoning with salt.

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 Broth or Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cut the beef into very small pieces.

  2. Place the beef in a covered stew pot with the cold water.

  3. Simmer gently for 3 to 4 hours until reduced to 1 pint.

  4. Season with salt and serve, adding dry bread if desired.

Make a stronger tea

  1. For a stronger tea, place the cut beef in a clean bottle.

  2. Make a hole in the cork to prevent bursting while retaining flavor.

  3. Cover the meat with water and place the bottle in a pot of boiling water.

  4. Boil steadily for several hours, then strain through a cloth into a cup.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the meat flavor and savory body that the broth is built on.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 3 to 4 hours. A gentle simmer extracts flavor slowly while keeping the broth clear. A hard boil agitates the liquid and fat, which clouds the broth and can make it greasy.

“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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