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Braised Beef a LA Providence

Braised beef served with cauliflower, flageolet beans, carrots, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 290 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Braised Beef a LA Providence

Ingredients

Directions

Braise and prepare the vegetables

  1. Braise the beef as directed in previous recipes.

  2. Add the cooked cauliflower, flageolet beans, and cooked carrots five minutes before serving.

  3. Place the vegetables with the skimmed gravy in a pan and reduce for five minutes.

Serve

  1. Dress the beef on a hot dish and arrange the vegetables in four heaps around it.

  2. Pour the gravy over the beef and serve.

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. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Cauliflower + carrottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together381 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Cauliflower + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,113 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 and supplies the savory meat flavor.
Cooked cauliflower
Adds tender texture and mild body to the vegetable heaps.
Flageolet beans
Add creamy, starchy texture that makes the vegetables more filling.
Cooked carrots
Add gentle sweetness and bright color to the vegetable heaps.
Gravy
Adds moisture and concentrated savory flavor to the beef and vegetables.

The step that matters

Reducing the vegetables with the gravy. Reducing concentrates the gravy's flavor and thickens it slightly as it clings to the vegetables. Boiling too hard or too long can make the gravy overly thick or salty and the vegetables mushy.

Swap the cauliflower

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

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, beans, carrot, 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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