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A LA Mode Beef

A slow‑cooked beef stew flavored with salt pork, onion, vinegar, bay leaves, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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A LA Mode Beef

Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

A LA Mode Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Lard the beef with the salt pork by cutting it into 3‑inch strips and inserting them into incisions in the beef.

Brown and cook

  1. In a large iron kettle, heat the butter or drippings and fry the sliced onion for 1–2 minutes.

  2. Add the beef and brown it on all sides.

  3. Pour in the boiling water, bay leaves, cloves, salt, pepper, and vinegar; cover and cook slowly for 4 hours or until the meat is tender.

  4. Add more hot water as needed to prevent the stew from drying out; remove the cover towards the end to thicken.

Finish the gravy and serve

  1. Once cooked, remove the meat and stir in the browned flour, adding hot water until the gravy reaches the desired thickness.

  2. Strain the gravy through a sieve and serve with the meat.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 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

Bound or neck of beef
Tough cut that becomes tender and rich during long, slow cooking.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that melts into the stew and the gravy.
Butter or drippings
Fat for frying the onion and browning the beef, building flavor and color.
Browned flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavor.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps balance the rich meat.

The step that matters

Brown the beef on all sides. Browning creates deep flavor through the Maillard reaction. Meat that is only grayed by steam will leave the stew tasting flat and pale.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, pork, onion, vinegar, butter, flour):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, pork, onion, vinegar, butter, flour. 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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