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Beefsteak a LA Mode

Beefsteak à la Mode is a pan‑cooked steak simmered in stock, port wine, and lemon, finished with fresh lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and port wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,499 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Beefsteak a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt butter in a chafing dish.

  2. Add beefsteak and lemon slices; cook slowly for 5-10 minutes.

  3. Pour in stock or hot water mixed with fluid beef and port wine.

  4. Simmer slowly for an additional 10 minutes.

  5. Squeeze lemon juice over the steak before serving.

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. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Beef + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together626 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Lemon + port winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Beefsteak
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it cooks gently in liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps brown the surface of the steak.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the sauce as it simmers and reduces slightly.
Stock or hot water
Provides the liquid that gently cooks the steak and forms the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly for an additional 10 minutes. Gentle heat keeps the steak tender; a hard boil toughens meat proteins and can make the sauce cloudy or reduce it too quickly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, beef, port wine):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, beef, port wine. 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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