No. 368

Plain Extract of Beef

Extrait de Boeuf Simple

Chop up very fine one pound of lean beef, put it into a saucepan and dilute it gradually with three pints of cold bouillon (No. 187); set it on a slow fire, and stir until it comes to a boil, then place it on the back of the stove where it will not boil, leave it there for half an hour, and strain it through a fine sieve or napkin.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A nineteenth-century invalid preparation: raw beef leached into cold stock and held just under a simmer so the meat gives up its juices without the broth clouding. Nearly everything here depends on temperature control.

Never let it boilDon't let it go on boiling -- the recipe takes it just up to a boil, stirring, then moves it to the back of the stove "where it will not boil" for the half-hour hold. That hold is the hinge: soluble proteins in the raw beef set and cloud the liquid at a rolling boil, and the extract turns grey and grainy instead of clear and red-brown. Keep it below a simmer, around 170-180F, which on a modern range means the lowest setting.
Start cold, alwaysThe beef must go into cold liquid and warm through with it, as the recipe specifies. Dropping raw meat into hot stock coagulates the outside at once and you get less out of it.
"The back of the stove"On a coal or wood range the rear plate ran cooler than the front, though by how much depended on the stove and the fire. A heavy pan on the smallest burner at its lowest setting reproduces it.
Bouillon No. 187Ranhofer's cross-reference to his own beef bouillon, a clear, unreduced stock. Any good beef stock works; avoid heavily reduced demi-glace or anything with tomato or wine, which will overwhelm what is meant to be a mild restorative.
Chopping the beef"Very fine" means as fine as a chef's knife will take it, which is roughly what a coarse grinder plate gives. Use lean top round or shin with all fat and sinew removed; fat is the main thing that makes this unpleasant to drink.
StrainingA fine sieve alone leaves sediment. Line it with a doubled square of muslin or a coffee filter and let it drip rather than pressing, which forces cloudy solids through.
Seasoning and yieldThe recipe itself adds no salt, though the bouillon it is diluted with may already carry some; season to taste at the table. Three pints in yields roughly two and a half pints strained, or five to six cupfuls.
Keeping itA low-temperature, lightly salted broth is a good bacterial medium. Chill it fast and use within two days, or freeze in single cups.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it sits in a section of broths and gruels intended for the sickroom. Beef tea of this kind was a fixture of nineteenth-century nursing: Liebig's much-publicised work on meat extract in the 1840s and 50s gave the practice a scientific gloss, and by the 1870s commercial extracts were sold on the strength of it. The chemistry did not really support the claims, since what dissolves out of beef at low heat is mostly water, salts, gelatin and flavour compounds rather than nourishment, and Florence Nightingale among others was skeptical of beef tea's value as food. Ranhofer's version is notable mainly for its restraint, and for the fact that a restaurant famous for terrapin and canvasback thought it worth printing recipes for invalids at all.