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Beef a LA Mode

A boiled beef and pork stew with onions, carrot, cloves, peppercorns, bay leaf, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sear the beef in the fat from the pork until browned on all sides.

  2. Add the onions, carrot, cloves, peppercorns, and bay leaf.

  3. Cook for 10 minutes.

  4. Transfer everything to a kettle.

  5. Cover with boiling water.

  6. Cover the kettle.

  7. Boil for 5 minutes.

Cook

  1. Place it in a cooker.

  2. After 1-2 hours, remove the kettle.

  3. Boil for 15-20 minutes, adding salt and pepper.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Transfer the meat to a hot platter.

  2. Boil the gravy.

  3. Skim off the fat.

  4. Strain the gravy into a serving dish.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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 and becomes tender during slow cooking.
Pork
Its fat is used to sear the beef, adding richness to the browning.
Onions
Break down during cooking to add sweetness and flavor to the liquid.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and body to the gravy as it softens.

The step that matters

Sear the beef until browned on all sides. Browning creates deep flavor through the Maillard reaction. Pale searing leaves the gravy tasting flat, and the surface must be dry and hot to brown rather than steam.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, onion, 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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