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Beef A' LA Mode

A beef stew cooked with a bread and butter dressing, seasoned with spices and simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 dressing

  1. Wet the bread in water and mash it fine.

  2. Add melted butter and all other ingredients to the bread mixture.

Stuff and stew the beef

  1. Cut gashes in the beef and fill them with half of the dressing.

  2. Place the meat in a baking pan and cover it with water.

  3. Stew gently for 2 hours with a lid on.

  4. After 2 hours, pour the reserved dressing on top of the meat.

Finish and serve

  1. Cover and stew for an additional hour in the oven, removing the lid to brown the meat.

  2. If the gravy is not thick enough, thicken it with flour mixed in water and add more butter before serving.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Round beef
Main protein; long gentle stewing breaks down its connective tissue, making it tender and moist.
Bread
Absorbs water and forms the body of the dressing, keeping it moist and soft.
Eggs
Bind the dressing so it holds together when stuffed into the meat.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy when mixed with water.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and mouthfeel to the dressing and gravy.

The step that matters

Stew gently with the lid on. Low, steady heat slowly converts the beef's tough connective tissue into gelatin. Boiling hard tightens the muscle fibres and dries the meat out.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, egg, flour, butter, allspice, pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, egg, flour, butter, allspice, pepper. 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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