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Beef a LA Mode

A beef stew with onion, garlic, carrot, rye bread, simmered slowly in butter and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Brown the onion in butter.

  2. Season the sirloin with salt and pepper.

  3. Brown the sirloin in hot butter in a saucepan on both sides.

Simmer and finish

  1. Add the chopped garlic and simmer with minimal water for two hours.

  2. Add the chopped carrot and rye bread, and cook until done, covered.

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Sirloin
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, slow simmering.
Rye bread
Thickens the stew slightly as it breaks down in the cooking liquid.
Butter
Carries browning flavour when the onion and sirloin are seared.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body as it softens in the stew.

The step that matters

Browning the sirloin on both sides. Searing the meat in hot butter creates browned surfaces through the Maillard reaction, which builds deep savoury flavour. Meat that is crowded or not hot enough steams instead, leaving the stew flat-tasting.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, pepper, garlic, carrot, rye, bread):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, pepper, garlic, carrot, rye, bread. 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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