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Beef 'a LA Mode

A boiled stuffed beef roast served with vegetables and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef 'a LA Mode

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the beef

  1. Wash and wipe the beef.

  2. Make incisions and push in strips of salt pork.

  3. Remove the bone, tie the beef with a strong cord, and skewer to keep its shape.

  4. In a Dutch oven, heat the drippings and brown the beef on all sides.

  5. Make stuffing with bread crumbs, salt, pepper, and chopped onion.

  6. Brown the stuffing in butter and fill the cavity.

Braise and serve

  1. Place the stuffed beef on an inverted plate in the Dutch oven. Pour in boiling water.

  2. Add onion, carrot, turnip, parsley, soaked mushrooms, and salt to the water.

  3. Sift flour over the meat and cover tightly.

  4. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 5 hours, basting frequently.

  5. Serve the vegetables with the meat and make gravy from the stock, seasoning with salt and pepper.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + carrottop 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

Beef round
Forms the main body of the roast, becoming tender during long, slow cooking.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that melts into the meat as it cooks.
Flour
Dusted over the meat to thicken the cooking liquid into gravy.
Bread crumbs
Absorb fat and juices in the stuffing, keeping the filling moist.
Dried mushrooms
Add concentrated earthy flavor to the stock as they rehydrate in it.

The step that matters

Browning the beef on all sides. Searing creates browned flavor through the Maillard reaction. Drying the beef first lets it brown rather than steam, so the surface must be fully browned before braising.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, bread, pepper, onion, butter, carrot. 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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