Why it works: Beef and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,677 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Beef or Veal a LA Mode
Ingredients
Directions
Rub the beef with mixed spices and coarse sea salt, then dredge it with flour.
Place skewers in the bottom of a well-tinned stew pan.
Spread thin slices of bacon on the skewers.
Place the beef on the bacon, add more bacon slices on top, and drizzle with vinegar and gravy or broth.
Cover the stew pan tightly and let the meat stew as slowly as possible.
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.
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Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10,677 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + vinegartop 27% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,652 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Beef + vinegartop 28% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,895 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Beef and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,677 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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