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Beef, a LA Mode

A slow‑cooked beef stew with bacon, carrots, onions, herbs, stock, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Cook the beef

  1. Boil the beef for 1 hour, first quickly, then gently.

  2. Remove from heat and place in a 400°F (200°C) oven to stew for 5-6 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the fat and strain the sauce.

  2. Place the meat on a dish with the vegetables around it.

  3. Pour the sauce over the meat and serve.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through long, slow, moist cooking.
Bacon
Adds salty, smoky fat that flavours the meat and the sauce.
Lard or butter
Adds fat for richness and carries flavour through the cooking.
Onions
Soften and turn sweet, adding savoury depth to the sauce.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the vegetables served with the meat.
Stock
Supplies the liquid that becomes the sauce and gives it body.

The step that matters

Stew the beef for 5-6 hours. Long, moist, gentle heat breaks down tough collagen in the beef into gelatin, making the meat tender. If it cooks too hard or too fast, the muscle fibres toughen and dry out.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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