Beef Puree
1 pt. beef broth 1 tablespoon sago 1 egg yolk 2 oz. raw beef Soak sago one-half hour in enough water to cover, stir into hot broth and cook until soft, add egg yolk mixed with a little broth and the beef, free from fat, and reduce to a pulp. Cook three minutes.
A convalescent soup of the beef-tea school: broth thickened with sago and egg yolk, enriched with scraped raw beef. It comes together in under an hour, but the finish demands attention.
- The hinge: temperature at the endOnce the egg yolk goes in, the soup must not boil or it will curdle into threads; once the raw beef goes in, it needs to reach 160F to be safe, since finely scraped meat carries surface bacteria all through it. Hold the pan between about 165F and 180F with a thermometer and give it the full three minutes, stirring.
- SagoSmall pearls of starch from the pith of the sago palm, sold in Asian and South Asian groceries. Pearl tapioca of the same size behaves similarly and is easier to find; the recipe's half-hour soak softens the pearls before they go into the hot broth.
- A pintTwo cups of broth. Use a well-flavoured unsalted or lightly salted beef stock.
- "Reduce to a pulp"The two ounces of raw beef are meant to be scraped to a paste, not diced. Traditionally you drew the back of a knife across the cut face of a piece of lean round, leaving the connective tissue behind; a few pulses in a food processor with the fat and sinew trimmed away does the same job.
- Mixing the yolkSlackening the yolk with a little of the hot broth before it goes back into the pan is tempering, and it is not optional here. Add it off the heat, then return the pan to a low burner.
- YieldAbout two cups, an invalid's portion rather than a first course for a table.
- ServingIt thickens noticeably as it cools. The recipe calls for no seasoning, so salt and pepper may be wanted at the end.
Beef purees, beef teas and beef essences fill the sickroom chapters of nearly every American cookbook between about 1880 and 1920, on the widely held conviction that the strength of meat lay in its juices and that an invalid could absorb them when solid food was impossible. Sago and its cousins arrowroot and tapioca were the standard invalid thickeners, prized for being bland, easily digested and quick to soften. If the source is a flour miller's promotional collection, it is a reminder of what those books were: they aimed to be a household's whole reference, so alongside the bread and cake recipes that actually sold flour you get soups, sickroom cookery and menus.