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Beef a LA Mode

A roast beef stuffed with bacon, spices, and vegetables, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Remove the bone from the beef and make gashes in it.

  2. Roll the lardons in parsley, thyme, and sweet marjoram before inserting them.

  3. Insert the pork or bacon into the gashes at regular intervals.

  4. Fill the opening where the bone was with rich force meat or bread-crumb dressing and sew it up.

  5. Rub the beef with a mixture of nutmeg, black pepper, ground cloves, allspice, and coarse sea salt.

Brown and braise

  1. In a saucepan, render the fat from the pork trimmings, then skim off the grease.

  2. Brown the beef in the hot fat on all sides, then dredge it with flour and brown again.

  3. Pour in enough boiling water to cover the meat halfway.

  4. Place the carrot, turnip, and onion on top of the beef.

  5. If necessary, place a kitchen plate or saucer under the beef to prevent sticking.

  6. Simmer gently on the back of the stove for four hours.

Serve

  1. Serve the beef with the vegetables arranged around it and some of the sauce.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 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

Round of beef
Forms the main body of the roast, becoming tender through long, slow simmering.
Dry-salted pork or sweet fat bacon
Lardons add moisture and richness to the lean beef as they melt during cooking.
Flour
Dredging the browned beef thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce.
Carrot, turnip, and onion
Vegetables flavour the braising liquid and become part of the sauce as they soften.

The step that matters

Brown the beef on all sides. Browning builds deep flavour through the Maillard reaction, and the flour dredge then browns to add colour and body to the sauce. Pale, under-browned meat gives a flat sauce.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, nutmeg, pepper, clove, allspice, thyme. 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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