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Beef a LA Mode

A slow‑cooked beef roast flavored with bacon, spices, wine, and aromatics, served with its own gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Remove the bone from the beef and stuff it with bacon, cloves, allspice, mace, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and sweet herbs.

  2. Bind the beef and place it in a pot, covering it with water and white wine.

Stew

  1. Add chopped onions, garlic, cayenne, vinegar, salt, and mushrooms if using.

  2. Sprinkle grated bread over the mixture, cover the pot, and stew gently for 6 hours or more.

  3. Once cooked, remove the beef and keep it warm over boiling water.

Finish the gravy and serve

  1. Strain the gravy, skim off the fat, return it to the pot, boil once, and adjust seasoning if desired.

  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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Round of beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through long, gentle stewing.
Grated bread
Thickens the cooking liquid into a fuller gravy as it stews.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the meat as it cooks inside the stuffing.
Onions
Break down during stewing, adding sweetness and body to the gravy.
White wine
Adds acidity and flavour to the braising liquid, helping tenderise the meat.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 6 hours or more. Low, slow heat lets the tough connective tissue in the round break down into gelatin, making the beef tender. A hard boil toughens the meat and can scorch the gravy on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, clove, allspice, nutmeg, pepper, onion, garlic):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove, allspice, nutmeg, pepper, onion, garlic. 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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