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Beef a LA Mode

A stew of beef with carrots, turnip, onion, and potato, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Dredge the beef in flour, then season with salt and pepper.

  2. Brown the meat on all sides in hot fat.

Braise

  1. Half cover the meat with hot water and cook slowly until tender.

  2. Soak the carrot, turnip, and potato in cold water.

  3. Add the vegetables and onion to the saucepan with the meat.

  4. Cook until the meat and vegetables are tender.

  5. Thicken the gravy with a mixture of flour and water until smooth.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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 cooking in liquid breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender and rich.
Flour
Dredging helps the meat brown, and a flour and water mixture thickens the gravy.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the gravy as it cooks down with the meat.
Potato
Starch softens during cooking, giving the vegetables a tender texture and thickening the gravy slightly.

The step that matters

Brown the meat on all sides in hot fat. Browning creates deep flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale, unbrowned meat leaves the finished gravy tasting flat, and the surface must be dry and the fat very hot for proper colour.

Swap the onion

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

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

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