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Beef a LA Mode

A stew of rump beef stuffed with pork and spices, simmered with onions, lemon, carrots, and currant jelly, finished with sour cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut deep openings in the piece of rump beef with a sharp knife.

  2. Stuff the openings with diced pork rolled in pepper, salt, cloves, and nutmeg.

  3. In an iron stewpan, layer sliced pork, onions, lemon, carrots, and bay leaf.

  4. Place the stuffed beef on top and cover with the bread crust.

Braise

  1. Add currant jelly, lemon juice, and enough water or broth to cover the meat halfway.

  2. Cover the dish tightly and cook until the meat is tender.

Finish the gravy

  1. Remove the meat and strain the gravy through a sieve.

  2. Skim off the fat and stir in sour cream.

  3. Return the gravy to the stewpan and cook for an additional 10 minutes.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Rump beef
Provides the main meat that becomes tender during long, covered cooking.
Sour cream
Adds richness and a mellow tang that rounds out the sauce.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body to the gravy as it melts into the liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the gravy and balances the sweetness.
Bread crust
Helps thicken the gravy and softens as it cooks into the liquid.

The step that matters

Cook until the meat is tender. Tough rump needs long, covered, low-moisture-loss cooking so collagen breaks down into gelatin. Cooking too briefly leaves the beef chewy, while a tightly covered pot keeps the braising liquid from evaporating too fast.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, pepper, clove, nutmeg, onion, carrot. 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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