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Alamode Beef

A slow‑cooked beef stew with lard, calf's foot, onions, carrot, herbs, garlic, cloves, salt, pepper, water, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Alamode Beef

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Lard the beef with thick lard and place it in a kettle.

Braise

  1. Add the pieces of fat, calf's foot, onions, carrot, fine herbs, garlic, cloves, salt, and pepper.

  2. Pour in the water and wine, covering the meat well.

  3. Cook covered over a small fire for about six hours until the meat is tender.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

  5. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the meat that becomes tender through long, slow cooking.
Thick lard
Adds fat that coats the meat and carries flavour during the long cook.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma that help build the flavour of the braising liquid.
Calf's foot
Releases gelatin into the liquid, giving the sauce body and a silky texture.

The step that matters

Keeping the meat fully covered and cooking gently. The liquid must cover the meat well and the heat must stay low. Gentle, covered cooking lets collagen slowly break down into gelatin, which makes the meat tender. Too much heat can toughen the meat and reduce the liquid too quickly.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, onion, carrot, parsley, thyme, garlic):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, onion, carrot, parsley, thyme, garlic. 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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