No. 382

Beef, Mutton, Chicken, or Veal Tea

The de Boeuf, Mouton, Poulet ou Vean

Two pounds of lean meat free from nerves and skin, either beef, mutton, chicken, or veal, taken from the thighs or any other juicy parts. Cut the meat into small quarter of inch squares, set them in a saucepan and pour over three pints of cold water, with a little salt added. Boil, skim, and keep near boiling point for one hour, then strain through a sieve or napkin and serve in cups. Another way is to fill up champagne bottles with the meat, put half a gill of water in each, tie down the cork with a string or wire, boil for three hours, uncork and pass through a napkin.

← No. 381 Sabayon of Chicken or Game Broths & Soups for Invalids No. 383 Veal Broth, Refreshing →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

A clear, unthickened extraction of meat rather than a stock: no bones, no vegetables, no browning. The technique is simple, but two details decide whether it tastes like meat or like dishwater.

Never let it boilNever let it boil hard -- after the initial boil and skim, hold the pot just below a simmer, which is what the recipe's "near boiling point" amounts to in practice. A rolling boil emulsifies fat and clouds the tea. A heat diffuser or a water bath is easier to control than a burner on its lowest setting.
Cut small, and cold waterThe quarter-inch dice and the cold start are both deliberate: surface area plus slow heating draws soluble protein and flavour into the water instead of sealing it into the meat. Do not skip either.
Half a gillA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 2 fluid ounces, 4 tablespoons. It appears only in the bottle method.
The champagne-bottle methodA sealed glass vessel held at a boil for three hours, corked and wired shut. Bottle methods for beef tea turn up elsewhere in nineteenth-century invalid cookery, though how widespread this particular champagne-bottle version was is not clear. Either way it is a burst hazard in a modern kitchen with modern bottles. Use a covered jar set loosely in a water bath, or simply the first method.
Two pounds to three pintsA generous meat-to-water ratio. The recipe gives no yield; expect somewhat less than the three pints started with, once skimming, absorption and straining have taken their share. It should taste distinctly of meat, not of broth.
Skimming and degreasingSkim the grey scum as it rises, then chill the strained tea and lift the fat cap before reheating. Fat on the surface spoils a tea that is meant to be clear.
Salt lightly"a little salt" means it, since the liquid concentrates over the hour. Season at the end, in the cup.
What it is notBeef tea is mostly water, salt, gelatin and flavour compounds. It is a pleasant restorative, not the concentrated nourishment nineteenth-century sick-cookery believed it to be. Feed a convalescent something else alongside it.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, gave The Epicurean (1894) a full section of "Broths and Soups for Invalids" because a great restaurant kitchen and a great house kitchen were both expected to cook for the sick as competently as for the table. Meat teas of this kind were a mainstay of Victorian sick-room cookery on both sides of the Atlantic, and were later commercialised into bottled beef extracts. The faith placed in them rested on a chemistry that turned out to be wrong: the flavourful soluble fraction of meat is largely free amino acids, salts and gelatin, while the protein stays behind in the drained fibres. Florence Nightingale, often cited in this connection, in fact recommended beef tea as a restorative while explicitly denying that it had much nutritive power.