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Beef a LA Mode

A slow‑cooked beef stew with pickled pork, onions, tomatoes, and a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Use a carving steel to make holes in the beef, 1-2 inches apart.

  2. Insert the diced pickled pork into the holes.

  3. Season the beef with pepper, salt, and ground cloves.

Stew

  1. Heat the lard in a pot and fry the onion until brown.

  2. Add the beef to the pot and pour in boiling water or stock to almost cover it.

  3. Add the tied bay leaves when you first put in the meat.

  4. Cover the pot and stew slowly for at least 3 hours.

  5. About 1 hour before it's done, stir in the ketchup or chili sauce and canned tomatoes.

  6. Optionally, add carrots or turnips.

Make the gravy

  1. Once the meat is done, remove it and add water and flour to the pot to make 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. 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. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 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 stewing.
Pickled pork
Adds salty, savory flavor and fat that melts into the surrounding meat.
Lard
Fat for frying the onion, carrying flavor and browning it before stewing.
Onion
Browned in lard to build savory depth for the braising liquid.
Canned tomatoes
Add acidity and color to the braising liquid, enriching the sauce.
Ketchup or chili sauce
Adds tangy sweetness and acidity to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stewing slowly, covered, for at least 3 hours. Long, gentle heat breaks down the tough connective tissue in the beef so it becomes tender. Boiling hard or cooking too briefly leaves the meat tough and stringy.

Swap the carrot

The recipe marks carrot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, pepper, clove, onion, meat, tomato):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Carrotthe original
  4. Okrafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, pepper, clove, onion, meat, tomato. 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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