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Beef Essence
Wipe one half pound round steak; remove fat; chop very fine; place in fruit jar; cover, place jar on trivet, surround with cold water, and keep water just bubbling for one and a half hours. Strain, press meat to extract all juice, season, serve in hot cup.
This is invalid cookery rather than dinner: a half pound of lean beef yields a few ounces of concentrated, salty juice. The method is sound but the vessel needs care.
- Do not seal the jarA screw band should be no more than fingertip tight, or use a jar with the lid simply resting on top. A tightly sealed jar traps expanding steam, which can spit when the lid is loosened.
- The trivet is structuralGlass sitting directly on a hot pan bottom is the usual cause of breakage. A rack, folded towel, or canning insert keeps the jar off the metal, and starting in cold water lets the glass come up to temperature gradually.
- "Just bubbling"Hold the water at a gentle simmer, with only occasional bubbles breaking the surface. A hard rolling boil rattles the jar against the pan and drives off water you will need to top up.
- The meatRound steak is specified because it is lean; trim every bit of fat and silverskin, since rendered fat floats on the finished essence and makes it unpleasant to drink. Chop by hand with a heavy knife; a food processor purees rather than cuts.
- No added waterNothing goes in the jar but the beef. All the liquid comes out of the meat itself; period writers often used "essence," "beef juice" and "beef tea" loosely, though essence generally meant the undiluted pressed juice.
- Straining and pressingPress through a fine sieve with the back of a ladle while everything is still hot; the juice runs more freely warm than cold.
- SeasonThe recipe says only "season"; salt, lightly, suits the intended plain, digestible drink.
- YieldExpect only a small quantity, a few tablespoons to perhaps a quarter cup, from a half pound of beef: one modest serving. Serve immediately in a warmed cup; refrigerate any remainder and use within a day.
Beef essence, beef juice and beef tea were staples of nineteenth-century sickroom cookery, given to invalids, new mothers and children on the widely held belief that the soluble matter pressed from raw meat carried its nourishment in an easily absorbed form. That idea owed much to Justus von Liebig, whose meat extract was commercialized in the 1860s and made "extract of beef" a household phrase; later analysis showed such extracts are mostly salts and flavor compounds with very little protein, but the practice long outlived the science.