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Beef a LA Mode

A braised beef dish with carrots, pork, and aromatics, finished with a thickened sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

  1. Lard the carrots and pork using a larding needle.

  2. Place the beef in a saucepan and cover with water and vinegar. Add the minced onion, cloves, pepper, allspice, and salt.

  3. Let it marinate overnight.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook the beef until done, then remove it from the pot.

  2. Thicken the cooking liquid, add Worcestershire sauce, strain, and serve with the beef.

  3. Carve the beef crosswise to display the carrots.

  4. Serve with gravy and garnish with parsley.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef rump
Forms the main body of the dish and, when cooked slowly, becomes tender and moist.
Vinegar
Acidity in the marinade helps tenderise the beef and brightens the flavour.
Carrots
Provide sweetness and colour, and show as a pattern when the beef is carved.
Pork fat
Larded into the meat, it adds richness and moisture as it melts during cooking.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and depth to the marinade and cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Marinate overnight. The acidic vinegar and water mixture needs time to penetrate and soften the tough connective tissue in the beef rump, so it should not be rushed.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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