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Beef a LA Mode

A slow‑cooked beef stew with bacon, calf's feet, carrots, onion, and bouquet garni, served with a reduced stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Remove the rind from the bacon and cut the bacon into ½-inch strips.

  2. Sprinkle the strips with pepper.

  3. Lard the beef in the direction of its grain, then tie the beef up.

Braise

  1. Place the beef in a stewpan with the stock, bacon rind, and calf's feet.

  2. Add salt.

  3. Bring to a boil, skimming as necessary.

  4. Add carrots, onion, bouquet garni, garlic, and pepper.

  5. Close the stewpan tightly and simmer for 4 hours.

  6. Remove the beef, calf's feet, and carrots to keep warm.

Reduce and serve

  1. Strain the cooking liquid into another stewpan and reduce over high heat for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove the string from the beef and place the beef on a dish.

  3. Garnish with carrots and calf's feet, then pour the reduced liquid over the beef.

  4. Serve.

  5. For a cold dish, place in a basin with the calf's feet, vegetables, and liquid to gelatinize.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  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 flank
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender during long, slow simmering.
Calf's feet
Release gelatin into the liquid, giving the sauce body and helping it set when cold.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that carries through the beef as it cooks.
Stock
Forms the cooking liquid that gently tenderises the beef and becomes the sauce.
Carrots
Add sweetness and flavour to the cooking liquid and garnish the finished dish.

The step that matters

Simmering the closed stewpan. Gentle, steady simmering with the lid on lets collagen in the meat and calf's feet slowly break down into gelatin without the liquid boiling hard and toughening the meat.

Swap the clove

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

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

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