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Beef a LA Mode

Beef a la Mode is a roasted beef with larding and forcemeat, cooked slowly with aromatics.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Ask your butcher to plug the beef with strips of salt pork or do it yourself using a larding needle or sharp knife.

  2. Pierce the beef and insert strips of fat salt pork, about 2 inches apart, projecting half an inch on each side.

  3. Make deep incisions between the lardoons and fill them with a forcemeat of 1 part minced pork to 2 parts bread crumbs, seasoned with pepper, allspice, parsley, thyme, marjoram, vinegar, and Worcestershire sauce.

  4. Cram the mixture into all crevices of the meat and bind it with muslin to keep its shape.

Braise

  1. Place the beef in a broad pot, cover with cold water, and add minced onion, sliced carrot, bay leaf, cloves, mace, parsley, and celery tops.

  2. Cook very slowly for 15 minutes per pound until tender enough to pierce easily with a fork.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Allspice + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef from the round
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through long, slow cooking.
Salt pork
Lardoons melt during cooking, basting the lean beef with fat and adding moisture and savory flavor.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and bind the forcemeat so it stays moist and holds its shape.
Finely minced pork
Adds fat to the forcemeat, keeping the stuffing rich and preventing it from drying out.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich meat and helps tenderize its fibers.

The step that matters

Cook very slowly for 15 minutes per pound. Low, gentle heat lets collagen in the round break down into gelatin, making the meat tender. Boiling hard toughens muscle fibers and can leave the beef dry and stringy.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, bread, pepper, parsley, thyme, marjoram):

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits about as well
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, bread, pepper, parsley, thyme, marjoram. 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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