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Beef a LA Mode

A slow‑cooked beef dish with tomatoes and salt pork, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. 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. Dredge the top sirloin with flour and a dust of pepper.

  2. Roll up the meat and place it in a pot with the tomatoes.

  3. Add the chopped salt pork (fried to extract the grease) and more pepper.

Braise

  1. Dredge the meat again with flour, cover closely, and bake for 4 hours at 300°F (150°C).

Serve

  1. Serve the meat on a deep platter and pour the salted gravy over it.

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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Tomato + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Top sirloin
Forms the main body of the dish; long, slow cooking tenderises its connective tissue.
Flour
Coats the meat to help it brown and later thickens the gravy.
Tomatoes
Provide acidity and liquid that form the gravy and keep the meat moist.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the braising liquid and gravy.

The step that matters

Covering the pot tightly during the long bake. A tight cover traps steam so the liquid cannot evaporate. This keeps the meat moist and lets the low, slow heat gently break down connective tissue instead of drying the beef out.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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