No. 369

Extract of Beef, Clarified

Extrait de Boeuf Clarifie

Remove the fat and nerves from five pounds of lean beef, either from the leg or rump, chop it up very fine and divide it equally into three empty and well washed champagne bottles, adding to each bottle, one gill of broth or water, or not any should a more concentrated extract be desired; cork and tie them well. Place these bottles in a high bain-marie, wrapping each bottle up in a cloth, and fill to five-sixths of their heighth with water; boil continually for two hours, and leave the bottles in the water one half hour after removing the saucepan from the fire, then uncork carefully. Fold two sheets of filtering paper together, lay them in a glass funnel and set these over high gallon glass jars, pour the liquid slowly through the paper and when all is strained, fill a well washed and clean champagne bottle with it; cork it up, letting the liquid reach nearly as far up as the cork, and put it on ice to keep.

← No. 368 Plain Extract of Beef Broths & Soups for Invalids No. 370 Fish Broth with Clams →

For the Modern Kitchen

A cold-extraction method by another name: the beef is never browned, never boiled in liquid, and never seasoned. What comes out is the meat's own juice, drawn out by gentle heat and then filtered until it runs clear. Two things need attention before you start, the sealed bottles and the keeping.

Do not cork and tie rigid glassChampagne bottles are heavy and built to hold internal pressure, which is presumably why they are called for here, though Ranhofer does not say. Two hours in a bain-marie will still build steam pressure behind a tied cork. Use wide-mouth canning jars with the rings only finger-tight, or cover each jar with foil, so steam can escape.
Bain-marie temperature"Boil continually" refers to the surrounding water, not the contents of the bottles. The recipe asks for a steady boil; a bare simmer is gentler on the glass, which a hard rolling boil will rattle.
A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. Adding one gill to each bottle gives a lighter, more drinkable extract; omitting it, as the recipe allows, gives a concentrate you would dilute at the bedside.
"Nerves"Nineteenth-century butchery language for sinew, silverskin and tendon. Trim them out completely along with all fat, both of which muddy the finished liquid. Leg (shin) is the more flavourful choice; rump the leaner and quicker to trim.
Chop, do not grindHand-chopped meat releases its juice cleanly. A food processor purees the fibre into a slurry that clogs the filter paper and takes hours to drip through.
FilteringTwo sheets of laboratory filter paper in a glass funnel translates to a large paper coffee filter, or three layers of damp muslin, set over a jug. Let it run under its own weight and never press or squeeze the solids, or the extract turns turbid.
YieldFive pounds of trimmed lean beef gives roughly a quart of extract with the added liquid, and appreciably less without it. Serve warmed in a cup, salted at the moment of serving.
Keeping"Put it on ice" means refrigerate, and that is the only safe storage for it. This is an unsalted, low-acid meat liquid with nothing to preserve it: keep it at 40F or below and use within two days, or freeze it in small portions.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) was Charles Ranhofer's summing-up of thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its chapter of broths for invalids reflects a genuine medical function that restaurant and household kitchens both carried in the period. Beef tea and clarified meat extract were prescribed for fever, convalescence and childbirth throughout the nineteenth century, on the belief that the soluble juices of meat carried its nourishment in a form a weak stomach could take; Justus von Liebig's commercial Extract of Meat, launched in the 1860s, made the idea an industry. The chemistry was later shown to be largely wrong, since what dissolves out is mostly gelatin, salts and flavour compounds rather than protein of any consequence, but the technique survives in the kitchen for other reasons. Extracting meat in a sealed vessel set in water, then filtering to absolute clarity, is the same logic behind a consommé and behind the modern sous-vide jus, and Ranhofer's insistence on washed bottles, folded filter paper and immediate icing shows a professional kitchen thinking in more or less laboratory terms.