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Beef A-LA-mode

A braised beef dish cooked with onion, carrots, celery, garlic, and beef broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Beef A-LA-mode

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

  1. Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat.

  2. Brown the beef on all sides, then remove it from the pot.

  3. Add the onion, carrots, celery, and garlic to the pot and sauté until softened.

  4. Return the beef to the pot, add the beef broth, bay leaf, salt, and pepper.

  5. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for 2-3 hours until tender.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 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 (chuck or brisket)
Tough connective tissue breaks down during long simmering, leaving the meat tender and moist.
Onion, carrots, celery, and garlic
Softened in the fat first, they build sweetness and aromatic flavor into the braising liquid.
Beef broth
Liquid that braises the meat gently and carries flavor into the sauce.

The step that matters

Brown the beef on all sides. Browning triggers the Maillard reaction, creating deep savory flavor and color that the long simmer cannot add on its own. Pale meat leads to a flat-tasting dish.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, carrot, celery, garlic, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, carrot, celery, garlic, pepper. 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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