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Beef A' LA Mode

A beef roast marinated with salt pork, spices, and vegetables, then fried and slow‑cooked in its own juices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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

  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 until brown in drippings.

  2. Add flour and turn the meat over to coat.

  3. Once browned, cover with hot water and cook slowly.

  4. Salt the meat when it is 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
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender during slow cooking.
Salt fat pork
Adds fat and moisture inside the lean beef as it melts during cooking.
Vinegar
Its acidity helps loosen the meat's fibres during the long marinade.
Flour
Coats the meat and browns, helping thicken the cooking liquid into a sauce.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and sweetness to the marinade and cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Browning the meat in drippings. Frying the floured surface until deep brown drives Maillard browning, which builds the savory flavor of the sauce. Pale meat will give a flat, weak-tasting result.

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.

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