The Magic of the Beef Fizz

Last week, this curious concoction was circulating Twitter:

From a 1975 Kitchen Companion drink guide. Cool off on a hot day with a frosty Beef Fizz. @70s_party pic.twitter.com/06knnH1VWh

— marvin (@docmarvy) June 17, 2020

I’ve been making a lot of unusual drinks lately (though nothing quite as unusual as this) so I figured I’d give it a shot. Lots of foods that I love (e.g. beer, cheese, honey) do not seem like they would be tasty when you describe the process to make them; maybe the same is true of the beef fizz?

My guess is that this drink is a family-friendly derivative of the Bullshot, a briefly trendy cocktail in the Bloody Mary tradition, and in my version I added the booze back to it (in this case, using tequila instead of vodka for a little more personality).

I took a sip of this and didn’t die, but it was surprisingly bland. I realized this was probably because I was using real beef stock and not Campbells, which is condensed & has a bunch of added seasonings. I ended up taking it in a slightly phở-influenced direction: inspired by the Gin-Gin Mule I added muddled mint & basil. After some more tweaks I added more flavors: instead of the Bullshot’s tabasco & worcestershire, I used sriracha and fish sauce.

In the end it was … fine? I described it to my partner as “about as good as a Bloody Mary at a wedding” – I probably wouldn’t make it for myself again, but I might try it if it were on a menu. I still suspect it would be better with a condensed broth base – I think much like coffee, it does not handle dilution well.

But when I was making this drink, I had a sort of epiphany about these drinks and their presence in 70s dinner party cookbooks – I think they are more fun to serve to other people than to drink yourself. The magic of this drink isn’t that it’s good, exactly, but that it’s way better than it sounds, and serving it to your guests is like performing a magic trick.