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Beef a LA Mode

A slow‑cooked beef stew flavored with salt pork, carrots, turnip, onion, and parsley.

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. Lard the beef with a larding needle or make incisions and press in strips of salt pork.

  2. Heat drippings or pork in a pot, then brown the meat on all sides.

  3. Dredge the meat with flour, salt, and pepper, then half cover with boiling water.

Braise

  1. Add carrot, turnip, onion, and parsley to the pot.

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

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

Serve

  1. Place the meat on a hot platter, thicken the gravy with the vegetables, and pour 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
Forms the main body of the dish; slow braising turns its connective tissue tender.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour that melts into the meat during larding.
Flour
Coats the meat so it browns well and helps thicken the gravy.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the braising liquid, thickening the gravy when cooked down.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma to the braising liquid and gravy.
Turnip
Adds mild earthy flavour and body to the gravy as it breaks down.

The step that matters

Keep the lid tight and the liquid topped up during the long simmer. Gentle, covered simmering breaks down connective tissue into tender meat. If the liquid evaporates, the meat can dry out and scorch, and the gravy loses body.

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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