Outstanding and Outdated: Beef Tea

1900 Bovril advertisement, per the Victoria and Albert Museum

This post represents what I hope will be an ongoing series called Outstanding and Outdated, an idiosyncratic history of drinks. Please feel free to suggest drinks you'd like to hear about!

Upon eating some delicious beef stew tonight, I was recalled to some experiments I had once made in preparing beef tea. The ubiquitous Victorian food of invalids had long piqued my curiosity. So I bravely took lots of beef and double-boiled it and found it fairly bland and uninspiring.

In terms of cook books, beef tea seems to first appear in 1861's Book of Household Management. There Mrs. Beeton explains that the tea is “to be administered to those invalid to whom flavoring and seasonings are not allowed” (unlucky people!).

In 1870, Napoleon III ordered beef to feed his troops, and a Scotsman created Johnston's Fluid Beef, later called Bovril. This was and is the most popular commercial beef tea in production and it remains an iconic part of British culinary heritage today.

The New York Times in 1880 apparently had so many inquiries that related to beef tea that they decided to devote a special column to the matter. There we read that beef tea is entirely composed of gelatine and that humans cannot derive sustenance from gelatine. The author instead recommended taking some commercial beef tea and then adding to it meat and water to make...homemade beef tea.

Beef tea, which is nowadays pretty much exclusively Bovril, has strong associations with British football culture, as a beverage for fans to enjoy on a cold morning in the stands. It has mainly lost its early associations with invalidism and is nowadays made at home only by anachronistic food enthusiasts like myself.

You can find Mrs Beeton's recipe here.

Meatless Monday; or, Watch Out, Cucumber!

I found myself feeling decidedly in the mood for something lighter over the weekend, and while some turkey lettuce wraps were good for an evening, it made me suspect that I needed an overall change in my nutrition. Not a dramatic change—I'll still be eating lumps of homemade pecan fudge—but a nudge in the right direction.

What I decided on was Meatless Monday. One day of abstinence weekly to help pep up my digestive system and get in a few nutrients I might otherwise zoom by on my way to the meat.

So I started out my Monday filled with anticipation. I had rye flakes for porridge, and, along with banana, blueberries, milk, maple syrup, and a few hazelnuts, they made a sumptuous breakfast.

Many people think a hot cereal is too much trouble in the morning, but I'm pretty sure they just haven't worked out the lazy girl way to do it. What I do is put quite a lot of water and a fairly generous helping of oats into a pan (for those who need ratios, a minimum of 3 to 1—lots of this water is going to cook off), put on low heat, then go and drink my coffee and smoke about fifty cigarettes. As long as the heat is low enough, the oatmeal/rye/wheatberries don't burn, and you don't have any trouble getting a good hearty breakfast!

Over the weekend, I definitely had pickles on my mind. Not the kind that have been languishing in a jar forever, but fresh pickles. They seemed to be popping up everywhere, including over at Make Grow Gather. With excitement, I brined up a bowl of fresh carrots that have been getting tangier and more delicious every day since. As you can see, I didn't really peel them, just scraped them a bit and washed them well.

Finding a basic brine recipe isn't hard, but here's mine:

1 c. cider (or rice wine, or even white) vinegar
½ c. water
1 generous tsp. sea salt
2 tsp. peppercorns, juniper berries, and perhaps a bay leaf (feel free to experiment here)
A small handful of complimentary herbs like dill or thyme
2 tsp. sugar
1 c. vegetable of choice

Heating the brine first is a good idea because it helps the salt and sugar dissolve and makes the spices more pungent. So combine everything but the vegetables and herbs in a saucepan, bring to a rapid boil, then allow to cool slightly. Arrange your vegetables and herbs in a glass jar/stoneware crock/non-metallic bowl/old butter tub, then pour the brine to cover. Refrigerate for at least one hour. Eat within three days.

Mother's Turkey Soup

Every year, for the holiday season, my mother makes this wonderful soup of leftovers, and every year, I like it far better than the meal that preceded it. It is the most forgiving soup imaginable. Everything in the ingredients list below, saving the turkey, is a suggestion rather than an imperative. Whatever vegetables or sides you have cooked for your meal will go wonderfully into the pot, although I will admit that the cranberries are perhaps my favorite part as they add a lovely tart sweetness. Please note that the ingredients below such as yams are pre-cooked.

Mother's Turkey Soup

2 cups turkey drippings
4-5 cups water
Turkey carcass split in half and its meat (assuming you have not cleanly picked the bones), turkey wings and meat, etc
2 cups stuffing
1/2-3/4 cup cranberry sauce
1-2 cups yams
1 cup green bean casserole
1 cup mashed potatoes

Boil drippings, water, and carcass 2-3 hours. Remove carcass and strip of its meat. Return meat to the stock. Add remaining ingredients for 30-45 minutes. Allow to sit perhaps a quarter of an hour to blend flavors. You may wish to skim fat from the top of the soup.

Almond Butter Parfait

For this recipe, I took inspiration from the Peanut Butter Parfait recipe here, then kicked it up a notch. Yes, the baba cakes are required. No, there is no substitute.

Almond Butter Parfait

1/2 c. light brown sugar
3 tbsp cream
2 tbsp light corn syrup
1 tbsp butter
3 tbsp dark chocolate almond butter (mine was ground and bought in bulk at the health food store)
vanilla bean ice cream to taste
amaretto-soaked baba cakes (available at Italian groceries in nice little glass jars)

Combine sugar, cream, corn syrup, and butter and cook over low heat for approximately five minutes, stirring frequently. Remove from heat, stir in almond butter. Cool to room temperature.

Layer almond butter mixture and ice cream in a parfait glass. Top with two baba cakes.

WARNING: You cannot eat as much of this as you think you can. I promise.

Strawberry Pie!

Today was a baking day, mainly because I finally saw some strawberries that looked like they had some juice in them at the store. I don't eat strawberries too far out of season because they just taste like water to me, but when they are in season, there's nothing I love better.

I usually make a fresh strawberry pie with a single shell, but I realized that I had thrown out my cornstarch in preparation for the move, which scotched that plan. Instead, I found and modified a baked strawberry pie recipe. I will admit, somewhat shamefacedly, that I used pre-made pie crust. My theory about pie crust is that I want to eat pie much oftener than I want to prepare pie crust (can you call that a theory? or just simple greediness?).

I used maple sugar for part of the sugar in the pie because it offers a nice dark counter-note to the brightness of the strawberry flavor. It doesn't, as you might expect, taste excessively of maple but has a beautifully subtle flavor.

And, of course, the best thing is those colors--just look at that juice oozing out!

Baked Strawberry Pie Recipe

2 pie crusts
1 quart strawberries, hulled and halved
1 cup sugar (I used half organic sugar and half maple)
Three tbsp. flour

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Toss strawberries with sugar and flour. Place one pie crust into tin and add filling. Top with second crust and cut vents before crimping edges. Bake for 30-40 minutes.

The Pleasures of Fresh Muesli

Fresh muesli is one of my favorite breakfasts. I make it with a base of oats, honey, and milk, then build from there. The simple combination of raw foods tastes incredibly fresh and healthy, and is just the thing to coax the stomach awake in the morning. Here's how I make muesli.

I start with about half a cup of oats, then douse them in maybe three-quarters cup of milk. I top it with a tablespoon of honey and pop it in the refrigerator overnight. Then, in the morning, when it's very soft and sweet, the real fun begins.

I grate a half an apple and toss that into the bowl (some smushed banana can also be very nice), then head to the pantry to see what I have in the way of nuts and dried fruits. This morning it was chopped pecans and dried cherries. I mixed them into the bowl, then chose to top the whole with a big dollop of greek yoghurt.

This dish is both simple and forgiving, allowing many different combinations while always tasting delicious.