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Beef a LA Mode

A braised beef dish cooked with bacon, ale, wine, onions, garlic, bay leaves, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Take a tough piece of lean beef and season it with salt and pepper.

  2. Roll the bacon strips in mixed spices and layer them over the beef.

Braise

  1. In a large pot, add chopped onions, garlic, bay leaves, ale, red wine, and cayenne.

  2. Place the beef in the pot and cover it with soup stock or water.

  3. Simmer on low heat until the beef is tender, about 2-3 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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 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

Lean beef
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Bacon or salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour that slowly melts into the meat and braising liquid.
Ale
Contributes malty, slightly bitter notes and helps tenderise the meat in the braise.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the braising liquid, enriching the sauce.
Onions
Break down during simmering to sweeten and thicken the braising liquid.
Garlic
Adds aromatic pungency that mellows and sweetens during long cooking.

The step that matters

Simmering low and slow until tender. Tough cuts contain collagen that only breaks down into gelatin with prolonged gentle heat. Boiling vigorously toughens the muscle fibres and can leave the meat stringy, so the liquid should stay at a bare simmer.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, mutton, pork, onion, garlic, red wine, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, mutton, pork, onion, garlic, red wine, pepper. 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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