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Beef Tea
Cut in small pieces 2 pounds' weight of fresh lean beef; add 3 pints of cold water; when on the eve of boiling, carefully remove the scum; the moment it boils add a pint of cold water; then let it boil up again, and remove the scum as before. If by this time it is not perfectly clear, the same quantity of water may be added a second time, which will cause more scum to rise. The same remarks apply to all other broths and gravies, which will always be transparent and finely flavored if the same rule be observed. Beef tea should be allowed to simmer not less than three-quarters of an hour, and not more than one hour, from the time it is last skimmed.
A clear meat infusion, not a stock: no bones, no vegetables, no browning. The whole method turns on repeated chilling with cold water so that the scum rises and can be lifted off.
- Quantities in modern terms2 lb lean beef to 3 pints water, with a further pint (and possibly a second pint) added during cooking. The book does not say whether these are imperial pints of 20 fl oz or US pints of 16 fl oz, so read 3 pints as somewhere between about 1.4 and 1.7 litres; the exact figure matters little, as the point of the added water is to shock the pot, not to dilute to a set strength.
- The hinge: never let it boil hardThe scum is lifted "on the eve of boiling," and the cold water goes in "the moment it boils," dropping the temperature and driving more coagulated protein to the surface where it can be skimmed. If the pot rolls at a full boil the scum breaks up and disperses, and the tea turns cloudy and greyish. Hold it at a bare shiver, with the surface barely moving.
- Cut it smaller than you thinkExtraction depends entirely on surface area, since nothing here is browned. Trim all fat and sinew and cut the beef into 1/2-inch dice, or coarsely chop it; shin, skirt or chuck give the most flavour for the money.
- Start in cold water, alwaysThe cold start is deliberate, and the recipe is explicit about it. The old explanation was that meat dropped into hot water seals and holds its juices; whatever the mechanism, the slow cold start draws out more of the soluble matter, which is the only reason this thin liquid tastes of anything at all.
- TimingThree-quarters of an hour to an hour after the last skimming is right, and the upper limit is real. Longer simmering does not add flavour once the shreds have given up their soluble matter; it only reduces the liquid and turns the meat to woolly threads that cloud the tea.
- Finishing and yieldStrain through a fine sieve lined with damp muslin, then chill so the fat sets and lifts off in a disc. Yield depends entirely on how hard it simmers; from the 4 pints in the pot expect most of it back, since the recipe wants a bare simmer rather than a reduction. The recipe gives no salt; add it at the table, lightly.
- StorageA lean, unsalted meat infusion spoils quickly. Cool it fast, refrigerate within two hours, use inside two days, and bring it back to a full simmer each time it is reheated rather than warming it repeatedly.
- What it is notBeef tea contributes almost no protein: the nourishment stays in the discarded shreds. If you are making it for someone who is unwell, treat it as a savoury warm drink and take advice on actual feeding elsewhere.
Beef tea belonged to a whole genre of "invalid cookery" that appeared as a standard section in nineteenth-century household manuals, alongside barley water, arrowroot gruel and calf's-foot jelly. The doctrine behind it was that the strength of meat lay in its juices, an idea given scientific dress by Justus von Liebig, whose Extract of Meat was marketed from the 1860s. Chemical analysis undercut that claim within a generation, since the extract is largely salts, gelatin and flavour compounds, but the practice long outlived the theory. What survives of the technique is genuinely useful: the cold start, the repeated cold-water shock and the patient skimming are the classical route to a perfectly clear consommé, and the recipe says so outright when it notes that the same rule applies to all other broths and gravies.