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Beef a LA Mode

A slow‑cooked beef stew with salt pork, carrots, turnips, onions, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Preheat a pot over medium heat and add drippings or pork.

  2. Use a larding needle or sharp knife to make incisions in the beef and insert strips of salt pork.

  3. Brown the beef on all sides in the hot pot.

  4. Dredge the beef with flour, salt, and pepper.

Simmer

  1. Half cover the beef with boiling water.

  2. Add carrot, turnip, onion, and parsley to the pot.

  3. Cover tightly and simmer for 4 to 5 hours, adding more water as needed.

  4. Ensure there is about 1 cup of liquid when the meat is done.

Serve

  1. Transfer the meat to a hot platter.

  2. Thicken the gravy with the vegetables.

  3. Pour the gravy around the meat.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

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

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

  5. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Long simmering turns the tough lower round cut tender and gives the dish its main body.
Flour
Coats the beef so it browns well and helps thicken the gravy.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that melts into the meat during the long cook.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the gravy as it softens and breaks down.
Turnip
Softens during simmering and adds body and mild sweetness to the gravy.
Onion
Contributes aroma and savory depth to the cooking liquid and gravy.

The step that matters

Brown the beef on all sides. Browning creates deep flavor through the Maillard reaction. Pale, unbrowned meat yields a flatter gravy, and the surface must be dry and hot for good color.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, flour, pepper, carrot, turnip, parsley):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, flour, pepper, carrot, turnip, 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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