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Beef a LA Mode

A stew of rump beef stuffed with pork and spices, simmered with wine, vinegar, onions, carrots, and bay leaf, finished with sour cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Make deep cuts in the rump beef with a sharp knife.

  2. Stuff the cuts with diced pork rolled in pepper, salt, cloves, and nutmeg.

  3. In an iron stew-pan, layer diced pork, sliced onions, lemon, carrots, and bay leaf.

  4. Place the beef on top and cover with bread crust.

Braise

  1. Add wine, vinegar, and enough water or broth to cover the meat halfway.

  2. Cover the dish tightly and cook until the meat is tender.

Make the gravy

  1. Remove the meat and strain the gravy through a sieve.

  2. Skim off the fat and stir in sour cream, then return to the stew-pan and cook for 10 minutes.

  3. Optionally, add capers, cucumber pickles, or grated bread to the gravy.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Rump beef
Provides the main meat that becomes tender during slow, covered braising.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the braising liquid and gravy.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that brightens the rich, slowly cooked gravy.
Sour cream
Adds richness and a mild tang to the finished gravy.
Bread crust
Thickens the gravy slightly as it breaks down in the cooking liquid.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury aroma to the braising base.

The step that matters

Cover the dish tightly and cook until the meat is tender. Slow, covered cooking in moist liquid breaks down the tough connective tissue in rump. Cooking too hot or uncovered lets the liquid evaporate and can leave the meat dry and firm.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, pepper, clove, nutmeg, onion, carrot. 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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