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Beef A-LA-mode

A slow‑cooked beef dish with bacon, vinegar, herbs, and vegetables, finished with port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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. Choose a piece of thick flank beef and cut it into long slices.

  2. Dip the bacon slices into vinegar, then into a seasoning mix of salt, black pepper, allspice, clove, and chopped herbs.

  3. Make deep holes in the beef for larding, rub the beef with the seasoning, and bind it tightly with tape.

Braise

  1. Place the beef in a well‑tinned pot over medium heat, add fried onions, carrots, turnip, celery, and water.

  2. Simmer gently for 10‑12 hours, turning the meat twice until extremely tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the fat from the gravy, keep the beef covered, then combine the beef and gravy, adding port wine.

  2. Remove the tape and serve with the vegetables, or strain and serve the vegetables diced as a garnish.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flank beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through long, slow simmering.
Bacon fat
Larded into the beef, it adds moisture and rich flavour as it melts during cooking.
Vinegar
Its acidity helps season the bacon and gently tenderises the surface of the meat.
Onions
Fried brown first, they add deep savoury sweetness and colour to the gravy.
Port wine
Adds sweetness, depth and richness to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Long, gentle simmering. Collagen in flank beef only breaks down into gelatin with prolonged low heat, which makes the meat tender. A rapid boil toughens muscle fibres and can leave the meat dry, so keep the liquid at a gentle simmer for the full time.

Swap the chive

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Chivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, vinegar, pepper, allspice, clove, parsley, thyme. 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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