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Beef A-LA-mode

A slow‑cooked beef stew flavored with vinegar, spices, herbs, onions, garlic, carrots, and suet or lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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 ↓

Beef A-LA-mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Dip beef pieces in equal parts ordinary and shallot vinegar.

  2. Roll beef in a mixture of nutmeg, black pepper, allspice, cloves, and salt, along with shredded herbs.

  3. Melt suet or beef lard in a stewpan over heat.

  4. Dredge the meat in flour and add to the stewpan with spiced onions and garlic.

Braise

  1. Brown the meat on all sides.

  2. Add carrots and boiling water.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and allspice.

  4. Seal the stewpan with flour paste.

  5. Simmer gently for 3-4 hours.

Finish the sauce

  1. If the sauce is not thick enough, remove some stock.

  2. Cool the stock.

  3. Thicken with ground rice.

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. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

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, becoming tender through long, slow simmering.
Vinegar
Its acidity begins to tenderise the surface of the beef before cooking.
Flour
Coats the meat to help it brown and thickens the cooking liquid.
Suet or beef lard
Provides fat for browning the meat and adds richness to the sauce.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the braising liquid.
Ground rice (in the method)
Thickens the sauce to a glossy, spoonable consistency.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 3-4 hours. Boiling rather than simmering toughens the meat's proteins and can make the sauce cloudy. A gentle heat lets collagen slowly break down into gelatin, so the beef becomes tender and the sauce silky.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, vinegar, nutmeg, pepper, allspice, clove, parsley):

  1. Carrotfits about as well
  2. Shallotthe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Parsnipfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, vinegar, nutmeg, pepper, allspice, clove, 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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