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Beef a LA Mode

A slow‑cooked beef dish flavored with bacon, cloves, mace, allspice, black pepper, cayenne, thyme, garlic, malt vinegar, and soup stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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. Trim the fat from the beef.

  2. Cut the bacon into long, slender strips and lard the beef with it.

Braise

  1. Mix the cloves, mace, allspice, black pepper, cayenne, thyme, garlic, and malt vinegar.

  2. Place the beef in an earthen crock with a thin slice of bacon underneath.

  3. Add the seasoning mixture and soup stock.

  4. Cover the crock and simmer for six hours.

Serve

  1. Optionally, cook vegetables separately to serve with the beef.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Thyme + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,608 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender during long, slow simmering.
Bacon
Larding adds fat and savory flavor that melts into the meat during cooking.
Malt vinegar
Acidity helps tenderize the meat and balances the rich, spiced flavors.
Soup stock
Liquid that moistens the meat and forms the base of the braising sauce.
Garlic
Adds aromatic pungency that mellows and deepens during long simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer covered for six hours. Long, gentle simmering breaks down the connective tissue in the beef, making it tender. Boiling hard or uncovering the crock can toughen the meat and dry out the liquid.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove, allspice, pepper, thyme, garlic, malt. 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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