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Beef a LA Mode

A beef stew with tomatoes, onions, cloves, and butter, simmered for 1.5 hours and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, heat the butter or beef drippings and cook the sliced onions until they are yellowed.

  2. Add the cloves and the cubed beef, frying until browned.

  3. Pour in the boiling water and add the stewed tomatoes and seasoning.

  4. Simmer for 1.5 hours.

  5. To serve, thicken the gravy with flour moistened in a little cold water.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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

Round beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during the long simmer.
Onions
Cooked until yellowed, they add sweetness and flavour to the gravy.
Flour
Moistened in cold water and stirred in at the end, it thickens the gravy.
Stewed tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Browning the beef. Frying the cubed beef until browned builds deep, savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale meat will give a flatter-tasting gravy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, butter, pepper, beef, onion, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, butter, pepper, beef, onion, flour. 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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