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A LA Mode Beef

A beef steak with fat salt pork, seasoned with pepper and cloves, steamed and finished with a flour-thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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A LA Mode Beef

Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

A LA Mode Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Make small holes in the beef at even distances using a knife.

  2. Roll the strips of fat salt pork in pepper and cloves.

Cook and finish

  1. Place the beef and pork in a pan, cover it tightly, and steam for 3 hours.

  2. After steaming, thicken the gravy in the pan with a little flour.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Clove + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pork + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,515 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

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender during long, moist steaming.
Strips of fat salt pork
Adds fat that bastes the beef and enriches the gravy as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy once steaming is done.

The step that matters

Covering the pan tightly while steaming. A tight lid traps steam so the beef cooks in its own moisture over a long period. If the lid leaks, liquid evaporates and the meat can dry out and toughen.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, pepper, 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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