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Beef a LA Mode

A roasted beef with spices, larding, and stuffing, finished with wine and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Hang the beef until quite tender.

  2. The day before cooking, spread a mixture of spices moistened with vinegar over the beef.

  3. The next day, fill the hole where the bone was removed with a seasoned stuffing of breadcrumbs, suet, parsley, thyme, and onion.

  4. Skewer the beef to hold its shape and lard it with strips of fat bacon.

Cook and finish

  1. Place the beef on a small tripod in a baking dish and put it in the oven.

  2. Baste the meat continually with a little lard and gravy.

  3. Half an hour before the meat is done, pour over it half a tumbler of red wine mixed with a spoonful of flour.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Allspice + coriandertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together393 recipes

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

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 and becomes tender as it cooks slowly.
Saltpetre
Helps the cured meat keep a firm texture and a rosy colour.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and moisture to the lean beef as it cooks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps the spice mixture cling to and season the meat.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during cooking.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour into the wine before pouring. Flour poured dry into liquid forms lumps, so blending it with the wine first keeps the gravy smooth. Flour starch thickens the pan juices as they heat, so adding it near the end gives a glossy sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, ginger, allspice, clove, coriander, vinegar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, ginger, allspice, clove, coriander, vinegar. 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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