Skip to main content
Main

Beef a LA Mode

A braised beef dish with pork fat strips, spices, and vegetables, simmered in vinegar and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Make holes in the beef with a sharp instrument and insert strips of salt fat pork, running them with the grain, letting the ends of the pork strips project.

  2. Place the meat in a bowl with cloves, peppercorns, bay leaf, carrots, turnip, and onion.

  3. Cover with vinegar and water and let it stand for several hours, preferably 2 to 3 days.

Brown and braise

  1. If the meat is tender, remove it from the marinade and fry it brown in a pot with drippings.

  2. Add flour and turn the meat over until browned.

  3. Cover with hot water and cook slowly.

  4. Salt when half done, cooking for about half an hour per pound.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + turniptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Round beef
Is the main cut that becomes tender and sliceable after long marinating and slow cooking.
Salt fat pork strips
Melt during slow cooking, adding moisture and richness to the lean beef.
Vinegar
Acidity in the marinade helps begin softening the meat's connective tissue.
Flour
Browns in the drippings and thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy.
Onion
Releases sweetness and aromatic flavor into the marinade and cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Salting when half done. Salt added at the start of a long braise can draw moisture out of the meat and toughen it. Adding it midway lets the flavor season the cooking liquid and meat as they reduce.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, carrot, turnip, onion, vinegar, 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.

More beef à la mode recipes

French 3 See all 169 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipes