Skip to main content
Main

Alamode Beef . No. 1

A beef stew cooked with bacon, bay leaves, onions, parsley, lemon peel, vinegar, beer, and claret.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Alamode Beef . No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Beat the beef well and season with pepper, cloves, and salt.

  2. Lard the beef with bacon pieces and place it in a stewpan.

Stew

  1. Add bay leaves, onions, parsley, lemon peel, vinegar, and beer.

  2. Cover and cook over a gentle heat, stirring often to prevent sticking.

  3. As the liquid increases, increase the heat slightly.

  4. Once cooked, skim off the fat and add claret.

  5. Stew for an additional 30 minutes, then squeeze in lemon juice before serving.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Round beef
Forms the main body of the stew, becoming tender with long, gentle cooking.
Bacon
Lards the beef, adding fat and savoury flavour that moistens the lean meat as it cooks.
Onions
Break down during stewing, adding sweetness and body to the cooking liquid.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour to the stew, deepening the overall taste.
Vinegar
Contributes acidity that brightens the rich, slow-cooked flavours.

The step that matters

Cooking over gentle heat and stirring often. Low, gentle heat with frequent stirring keeps the liquid from boiling hard and the bottom from scorching or sticking, so the beef becomes tender rather than tough and dry.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, clove, parsley, lemon, vinegar, beer. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes