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Beef a LA Mode

A slow‑cooked beef stew with carrots, turnips, onions, and parsley, simmered in a pork‑infused broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Preheat a pot and add drippings or slices of pork.

  2. Lard the beef with salt pork or make incisions and press in the strips.

  3. Brown the meat on all sides in the hot pot.

  4. Dredge the meat with flour, salt, and pepper.

Braise

  1. Half cover the meat with boiling water.

  2. Add carrots, turnips, onions, and parsley.

  3. Cover the pot tightly and simmer for 4 to 5 hours, adding more water as needed.

  4. Ensure about 1 cup of liquid remains when the meat is done.

Serve

  1. Place the meat on a hot platter.

  2. Thicken the gravy with the vegetables before pouring it around the meat.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Long, slow simmering turns the tough lower round cut tender and flavourful.
Flour
Dredging the meat helps brown the surface and thickens the gravy.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour that moistens the lean beef as it cooks.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the gravy as they soften during the simmer.
Onions
Contribute savoury depth and sweetness to the cooking liquid.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and starch that helps thicken the gravy.

The step that matters

Keeping the pot tightly covered and the liquid topped up while simmering. Slow, moist heat is what breaks down the connective tissue in tough round cuts. If the liquid evaporates or the lid is left off, the meat can dry out and toughen before it becomes tender.

Swap the onion

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

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

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