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Beef a LA Mode

A slow‑cooked beef roast with bacon, pork, bread crumbs, onions, carrots, herbs, and a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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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 ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Bone the round of beef and lard it with fat bacon.

  2. Make several incisions and fill them with a savory dressing of bread and chopped pork.

  3. Skewer the beef well together and tie it in good form with twine.

Brown and stew

  1. Fry pieces of pork in a pot until crisp, then remove them.

  2. Add the beef to the pot and brown it all over.

  3. Add enough water to cover the beef, along with the chopped onion, sliced carrots, cloves, sweet herbs, salt, and pepper.

  4. Cover closely and let it stew gently for several hours until very tender.

Make the gravy

  1. Ensure the water boils down to make a rich gravy, being careful not to let it burn.

  2. Strain and thicken the gravy with browned flour if desired.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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 joint that becomes tender through long, slow stewing.
Fat bacon
Larding adds fat that bastes the lean beef and keeps it moist as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Bind the savory dressing and soak up juices, giving the stuffing a moist texture.
Chopped pork
Adds richness and fat to the stuffing, keeping it moist and savory.
Onion
Releases sugars and flavor into the stewing liquid, deepening the gravy.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Stew gently and keep the pot covered. Low, covered simmering slowly breaks down the tough connective tissue in the round of beef into gelatin, making it tender. Boiling hard toughens the meat and can scorch the liquid, which then reduces too far and burns.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, pork, onion, carrot, 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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