Skip to main content
Main

Beef a LA Mode

A slow‑cooked beef stew with onions, carrots, herbs, and cloves, thickened with cornstarch.

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

Why it works: Clove and pepper 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the beef into pieces and cover with water.

  2. Add the chopped onion, carrot rings, herbs, and cloves.

Cook and finish

  1. Simmer for 3.5 hours.

  2. Thicken the broth with pepper, salt, and cornstarch.

  3. Serve very hot.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  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

Leg of beef
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender during long, slow simmering.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the broth as it cooks.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the broth.
Cornstarch
Thickens the broth into a glossy, looser gravy when heated.

The step that matters

Thicken the broth with cornstarch. Cornstarch must be heated in liquid to swell and thicken. Adding it to cold liquid can clump, and stopping before it simmers leaves the broth thin.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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