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Beef a LA Mode

A braised beef with vegetables, spices, and a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 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. Cut the fat salt pork into thick strips.

  2. Use a larding needle to draw the pork through the beef. Make holes in the beef and push the pork into the meat.

  3. Dredge the beef with salt, pepper, and flour.

  4. Brown the beef on all sides in the same skillet.

Make the braise

  1. In a skillet, cook the chopped vegetables in the beef drippings until browned.

  2. Remove the browned vegetables from the skillet.

  3. Tie the herbs in a small piece of cheesecloth.

  4. Add water, herbs, spices, salt, pepper, vinegar, and the browned vegetables to a pot.

  5. Simmer the mixture tightly covered for four hours.

  6. Remove the beef from the pot.

Finish the gravy

  1. Skim off the fat from the surface.

  2. Thicken the gravy with flour mixed with a little cold water.

  3. Optionally, bake the beef in the oven, keeping it closely covered and basting occasionally.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender during long, slow simmering.
Pork fat salt pork
Larded through the beef, it adds fat and moisture as it melts during cooking.
Flour
Coats the beef for browning and later thickens the cooking liquid into gravy.
Onions
Break down during browning and simmering, adding sweetness and body to the gravy.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps tenderize the meat and brightens the gravy.

The step that matters

Brown the beef on all sides. Browning creates deep flavour through the Maillard reaction, and a pale sear leaves the gravy flat. Dry the meat and use hot drippings so it browns rather than steams.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, vinegar, onion, carrot, turnip, pepper, clove. 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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