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Beef Tea
Freshly-killed, lean, juicy beef is required for making beef tea. Steak, or the roll of the blade-bone of beef, are the best portions for the purpose. Take away all fat, skin, gristle, etc., and leave only the lean meat; cut this into very small pieces, put into a jar, and pour cold water over it, allowing a pint of water for a pound of beef. Let it soak for an hour, when the water should be red, and the meat white; then cover it closely, and set the jar in a deep saucepan with boiling water to come half-way up its height. Simmer by the side of the fire for two or three hours. Pour it out, skim from the surface with a spoon any particles of fat that may be seen, and take away the remainder with a sheet of clean paper. Season to taste, and the beef tea is ready. If more convenient the jar may be set in a cool oven instead of in a saucepan of water.
A sickroom staple rather than a soup: the point is to extract the soluble juices of raw beef without ever letting them boil. Handle it gently and it stays clear and savoury; boil it and you get grey scum and flat flavour.
- Never let it boilThe jar sits in a pan of water so the contents stay below boiling. Boiling coagulates the muscle protein into grey flecks and clouds the liquid.
- The cold soak is the whole methodAn hour in cold water draws out myoglobin and soluble proteins, which is why the water turns red and the meat pales. Going straight to heat without the soak gives a thinner result.
- "Freshly-killed"In the period this meant meat that had not sat in a larder in warm weather. Any good lean modern beef will do; skirt, flank or a lean piece of chuck is closer to "the roll of the blade-bone" than a premium steak, and cheaper.
- The jarUse a heatproof glass canning jar or a stoneware pot, covered but not sealed tight, standing on a folded cloth or trivet in the pan so it does not rattle on the base. A sealed lid over a long heating is a pressure risk.
- "A cool oven"Around 250-275F. Stand the covered jar in a roasting tin with an inch or two of hot water and hold it there for the two to three hours.
- Proportions and yieldA pint of water to a pound of meat gives perhaps three quarters of a pint of finished tea after losses and skimming - one or two invalid-sized cups. The spent meat has little flavour left in it.
- Skimming with paperThe trick still works: lay a sheet of kitchen paper flat on the surface and lift it away with the last film of fat. Chilling the tea and lifting the set fat off is easier if you are not serving it at once.
- Keeping itLightly cooked, unsalted meat broth is an excellent bacterial medium. Cool it quickly, refrigerate, and use within a day, reheating thoroughly.
Beef tea belongs to the nineteenth-century category of "invalid cookery" - dishes made for the sick, the convalescent and the very young. It sits in the principles section of Cassell's because the technique demonstrates extraction: getting the soluble matter out of meat with water and low heat, as against the sealing action of roasting. Faith in it was enormous, boosted by the popularity of commercial meat extracts from the middle of the century onward, and it was widely assumed to be concentrated nourishment. Later analysis showed otherwise - the liquid carries flavour compounds, gelatin and salts but very little protein, the bulk of which stays in the discarded meat - and Florence Nightingale is often quoted as having warned that a patient could not live on beef tea alone. It survives today less as medicine than as the ancestor of a clear, gently extracted broth.