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Beef a LA Mode

A beef stew with carrots, turnip, onion, celery, tomatoes, garlic, and vinegar, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Wipe the beef with fat and sprinkle with salt.

  2. Pour vinegar over the beef and let it stand for several hours.

  3. Cut up the vegetables and place them on top of the beef.

Brown and cook

  1. Pour off the vinegar and place the beef in a pot with a little butter or fat.

  2. Fry the beef on both sides quickly until browned.

  3. Add brown flour, 3 cups of water, and the vegetables to the pot.

  4. Cook for 20 minutes per pound.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Round beef
Provides the main protein; long cooking turns its connective tissue tender and rich.
Brown flour
Thickens the cooking liquid as it simmers, giving the stew body.
Vinegar
Acidity softens the beef during the long soak before cooking.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and savory depth to the stew liquid.

The step that matters

Fry the beef on both sides until browned. Browning creates deep savory flavor through the Maillard reaction. Crowding the pot or stopping early leaves the stew pale and flat-tasting.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, tomato, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, tomato, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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