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Beef a LA Mode

A slow‑baked beef seasoned with spices, stuffed, larded with bacon, and basted with lard and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove 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 the beef

  1. Hang the beef until quite tender.

  2. The day before cooking, spread a mixture of spices moistened with vinegar over the beef.

  3. The next day, fill the hole where the bone was removed with seasoned stuffing made of breadcrumbs, suet, parsley, thyme, and a few shreds of onion.

  4. Skewer and roll the beef into a good shape.

  5. Lard the beef with strips of fat bacon.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the beef on a small tripod in a baking dish.

  2. Put the beef in the oven.

  3. Baste the meat continually with a little lard and gravy.

  4. Half an hour before the meat is done, pour over it half a tumbler of red wine mixed with a spoonful of flour.

  5. Cook for four to five hours.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Allspice + coriandertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Round of beef
Forms the main body of the dish, and slow cooking turns its connective tissue tender.
Fat bacon
Strips threaded through the meat melt during cooking, adding moisture and richness.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the braising liquid.
Vinegar
Acidity moistens the spice mixture and helps it penetrate the meat.
Red wine (in the method)
Adds acidity and flavour to the gravy that cooks around the beef.

The step that matters

Adding the wine and flour half an hour before the end. Flour mixed into the wine thickens the liquid into a gravy. Added too early, it can scorch or thicken unevenly, and too late it will not blend in properly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ginger, allspice, clove, coriander, pepper, vinegar. 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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