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Beef a LA Mode

A braised beef roast stuffed with spices, bacon, and herbs, simmered with wine, onions, garlic, and optional mushrooms, served with a savory gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 round of beef and stuff it with chopped bacon mixed with ground cloves, allspice, mace, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and sweet herbs. Bind the beef and place it in a pot.

Stew

  1. Cover with water and white wine. Add chopped onions, garlic, cayenne, vinegar, salt, and mushrooms if using. Sprinkle grated bread over the mixture. Cover the pot.

  2. Stew gently for six hours or more.

Finish the gravy and serve

  1. Once cooked, remove the beef. Keep it warm over boiling water.

  2. Strain the gravy. Skim off the fat. Return it to the pot. Boil briefly. Adjust seasoning if desired.

  3. Pour the gravy over the beef. 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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 and becomes tender during long, gentle stewing.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that keeps the stuffed beef moist as it cooks.
White wine
Acidic liquid that helps tenderise the meat and builds the flavour of the gravy.
Onions
Break down during stewing, adding sweetness and body to the gravy.
Grated bread
Soaks up liquid and thickens the gravy as it cooks.

The step that matters

Stew gently for six hours or more. Low, slow heat lets the tough connective tissue in the beef break down into gelatin, making it tender. Boiling hard toughens muscle fibres and can dry out the meat.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove, allspice, mace, nutmeg, pepper, white wine. 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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