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Stewed Beef a LA Mode

A stew of beef pieces simmered with onion, spices, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Stewed Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dredge the beef pieces in flour.

Make the stew

  1. In a stew pan, heat the beef drippings and sauté the sliced onion.

  2. Add the beef to the pan and fry for 10 minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. Gradually add enough water to cover the meat.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, allspice, cloves, mace, bay leaf, and sliced lemon.

  5. Let it simmer gently for four hours.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  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

Round beef
Forms the main body of the stew, becoming tender during long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Coats the beef so it browns in the drippings and helps thicken the cooking liquid.
Beef drippings
Provides fat for frying the beef and onion, adding rich, browned flavor.
Sliced onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, adding savory depth to the stew.
Sliced lemon
Adds acidity and bright aroma that balance the rich beef.

The step that matters

Let it simmer gently for four hours. Gentle, long simmering breaks down the tough connective tissue in round beef, making it tender. A hard boil toughens the meat and can leave it stringy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, onion, meat, pepper, allspice, clove):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, onion, meat, pepper, allspice, clove. 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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