Skip to main content
Main

Beef a LA Mode

A slow‑cooked beef dish flavored with bacon, cloves, mace, allspice, pepper, thyme, garlic, vinegar, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 the beef

  1. Trim the fat from the beef.

  2. Cut the bacon into long, slender strips.

  3. Lard the beef with the bacon strips.

  4. Mix the cloves, mace, allspice, black pepper, cayenne, thyme, garlic, and malt vinegar.

Braise

  1. Place a thin slice of bacon in an earthen crock.

  2. Add the beef to the crock.

  3. Pour the seasoning mixture over the beef.

  4. Add the soup stock.

  5. Cover the crock.

  6. Simmer for six hours.

Serve

  1. If desired, cook vegetables separately.

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. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

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

  3. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,608 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

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through long, slow simmering.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor as it renders into the beef and surrounding liquid.
Malt vinegar
Acidity helps tenderize the meat and brightens the seasoned liquid.
Soup stock
Provides moisture for the simmer and carries flavor into the beef.

The step that matters

Simmer for six hours. The long, gentle simmer in a covered crock breaks down tough connective tissue in the beef. Too much heat or boiling can toughen the meat and dry out the liquid, so keep the liquid at a low, steady simmer.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, clove, allspice, pepper, thyme, garlic, malt):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove, allspice, pepper, thyme, garlic, malt. 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.

More beef à la mode recipes

French 3 See all 169 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes