Skip to main content
Main

A-LA-mode Beef

A slow‑cooked beef stew with onions, carrots, and thyme.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,563 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

A-LA-mode Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the beef into square pieces about the size of an egg.

  2. Fry the beef in a saucepan with a bit of dripping until lightly browned.

  3. Shake in the flour and stir together.

Simmer

  1. Add the chopped onions and carrots.

  2. Stir in the water.

  3. Season with black pepper, coarse sea salt, and thyme.

  4. Stir the mixture over the fire until it boils.

  5. Reduce the heat.

  6. Let it simmer gently for at least 2.5 hours.

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 + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

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

Beef
Slow simmering breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender and moist.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a rich, body-forming gravy as it heats.
Onions
Release sweetness and savory depth as they soften in the stew.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and color while holding their shape during simmering.

The step that matters

Let it simmer gently for at least 2.5 hours. Keeping the heat low lets collagen in the beef slowly convert to gelatin, so the meat turns tender instead of tough. A hard boil toughens the muscle fibers and can make the stew cloudy and the flour lumpy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, carrot, pepper, thyme):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, carrot, pepper, thyme. 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.

More beef stew recipes

with Dumplings 30Brazilian 20French 20Spiced 17Pudding 16English 15 See all 357 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes