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Beef Alamode

A slow‑cooked beef stew with onions, flour, allspice, black pepper, bay leaves, and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Beef Alamode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the beef into pieces of about ¼ pound each.

Brown the beef

  1. In a large saucepan, heat the beef dripping and sauté the onions until hot.

  2. Dredge the beef pieces in flour and add them to the saucepan, stirring for 8‑10 minutes.

  3. Continue adding flour gradually while stirring until the meat is browned and no longer absorbs flour.

Simmer and serve

  1. Add boiling water to cover the meat, stirring well.

  2. Stir in the allspice, black pepper, and bay leaves.

  3. Cover and simmer gently over low heat for 3 hours.

  4. About 15 minutes before serving, stir in the mushroom ketchup.

  5. Ensure the meat is tender before serving in a tureen.

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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the meat that becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Coats and browns the meat and thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy.
Beef dripping
Adds fat for browning the meat and onions, carrying rich savoury flavour.
Onions
Soften during sautéing and add sweetness and savoury depth to the stew.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour added late to keep it bright.

The step that matters

Brown the meat and flour properly. Stirring flour into hot fat until the meat browns builds colour and toasty flavour, and thickens the liquid. Pale or underbrowned meat gives a flat, starchy gravy.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, flour, meat, pepper, mushroom, ketchup. 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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