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Beef a LA Mode

A slow‑cooked beef stew with bacon, lemon, claret, vegetables, and herbs, finished with a brown roux‑thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Using a wooden rolling pin, beat the steak well.

  2. Lard the steak with the bacon, rolled in seasoning.

Braise

  1. In a stewpan, combine the meat, wine, chopped vegetables, and the muslin bag of herbs.

  2. Squeeze the juice of the half lemon over the mixture and add enough stock to barely cover the meat.

  3. Cover the pan and cook for about 2 hours.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the meat and keep it warm.

  2. Boil the gravy, thicken it with the brown roux, and season to taste.

  3. Strain the gravy and pour it around the meat when re-heated.

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

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through long, slow cooking in liquid.
Bacon fat
Larding adds fat and richness that keeps the lean meat moist during cooking.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour that helps build the depth of the braising liquid.
Brown roux
Thickens the strained gravy so it coats the meat.
Onions
Break down during braising to add sweetness and body to the gravy.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and aromatic body to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Cooking the meat gently in barely enough liquid. Long, gentle simmering under a lid breaks down tough connective tissue in the beef, making it tender. Boiling hard would toughen the muscle fibres and reduce the meat's juiciness.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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