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Quickly Made Beef Tea
Pour three-quarters of a cup of cold water over half a pound of raw hamburg steak. Allow it to stand ten minutes in a cool place, then set on the stove and let it cook slowly for ten minutes. Add a little salt, just before taking from the fire, and strain.
A one-serving invalid drink from the era when beef tea was standard sickroom fare. It comes together in half an hour, but a few of its assumptions need translating.
- Hamburg steakIn 1900 this generally meant lean beef chopped or ground, usually sold plain by the butcher, though period recipes under that name often added onion or pepper. Use ground round or sirloin; the leaner the meat, the less fat you have to skim off the finished cup.
- A cool placeThe cold soak draws soluble protein and colour out of the meat before heat sets it. Ten minutes in the refrigerator does the job the recipe asks for.
- Cook slowlyBeef tea was deliberately kept below boiling so it would not turn cloudy and grey. Aim for a bare simmer, around 180-190F, with the surface barely moving. A hard boil coagulates the extract into scum and dulls the flavour.
- Ground beef and heatGrinding spreads any surface bacteria through the whole mass, so the liquid and meat should both be brought properly hot rather than merely warmed. Ten minutes at a genuine simmer is sufficient; a lukewarm steeping is not.
- StrainPress the meat firmly in a fine sieve, or line it with damp cheesecloth if you want a clear cup. Skim any fat from the surface with a spoon or a strip of paper towel.
- What it actually isBeef tea is largely flavoured water; most of the protein stays behind in the strained-out meat, which is why it fell out of favour as invalid nourishment. Treat it as a light savoury broth, not a meal.
- YieldAbout half a cup after straining and skimming, meant to be drunk hot from a cup. Season at the end as directed, since reducing salted liquid concentrates it quickly at this small volume.
Beef tea belongs to the branch of nineteenth-century cookery called invalid cookery, a fixture of household manuals from the 1850s through the First World War, when broths, gruels, jellies and toast water were what a sickroom could offer. The idea that the strength of meat could be drawn out into a liquid was reinforced by the commercial meat extracts of the period, and household writers produced dozens of variants: beef tea made in a jar set in boiling water, beef tea scraped and squeezed raw, beef tea cooked for hours. This version earns its title by cutting the process to twenty minutes using ground beef, which exposes far more surface than a whole piece. Florence Nightingale had already noted in her Notes on Nursing (1859) that beef tea contained very little actual nourishment, and later analysis bore her out, though the drink outlived the criticism by decades on the strength of being warm, salty and easy to swallow.