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Beef a LA Mode

A braised beef stuffed with salt pork and spices, marinated and slow‑cooked.

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 the beef

  1. Make holes in the beef with a sharp instrument and insert strips of salt fat pork, running 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 marinate for several hours, preferably 2-3 days.

Brown and cook

  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 to coat it evenly.

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

  4. Add salt when the meat is half done, cooking for about 30 minutes 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

Beef round
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow, moist cooking.
Salt fat pork
Adds fat and flavour that melts into the meat during slow cooking, keeping it moist.
Vinegar
Acidity in the marinade helps soften the meat's surface and adds tang.
Flour
Coats the meat so it browns well and helps thicken the cooking liquid.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the braising liquid as they cook.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and sweetness to the braising liquid as it softens.

The step that matters

Browning the meat before adding water. Frying the floured meat until well browned builds deep flavour through the Maillard reaction. Skipping or rushing this step leaves the sauce pale and flat.

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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