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Beef a LA Mode

A slow‑cooked beef dish with salt pork and spices, finished with a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Gash the beef at 1-inch intervals to create pockets for the salt pork.

  2. Insert the strips of salt pork into the gashes.

  3. Tie the beef securely with string.

Cook

  1. Place a plate in the bottom of a large pot to prevent sticking.

  2. Add the beef to the pot.

  3. Pour in the water.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, cloves, cinnamon, and allspice.

  5. Cover the pot.

  6. Cook until the beef is tender.

Make the gravy

  1. Remove the beef from the pot.

  2. Add a little water and flour to the pot to make gravy.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Pepper + clovetop 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 beef
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through long, moist cooking.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that melts into the beef, keeping it moist.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy.

The step that matters

Cover the pot and cook until tender. Gentle, covered simmering with a little liquid breaks down the tough connective tissue in a cut like round beef. Cooking too hot or too briefly leaves the meat tough and dry.

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, pepper, clove, allspice, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Cinnamonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, pepper, clove, allspice, flour. 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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