Skip to main content
Main

Beef a LA Mode

A slow‑cooked beef stew with bacon, vegetables, vinegar, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

  1. Slice the onions and fry them until pale brown.

  2. Cut the other vegetables into small pieces.

  3. Cut the bacon into long slices, about 1 inch thick, then dip the bacon slices into vinegar.

  4. Dip the bacon slices into the mixed seasoning and minced herbs.

  5. Make holes in the beef deep enough to insert the bacon.

  6. Rub the beef with the remaining seasoning and herbs.

  7. Bind the beef into a nice shape with kitchen twine.

Simmer

  1. Place the beef, vegetables, vinegar, and water in a well-tinned stew pan.

  2. Simmer gently for 5 hours, turning the meat once or twice during simmering.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the beef from the pan and take off the twine.

  2. Place the beef on a hot dish.

  3. Skim off any fat from the gravy, then add the port wine to the gravy.

  4. Bring the gravy to a boil.

  5. Pour the boiling gravy over the beef.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  4. Allspice + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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, gentle simmering.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour as it melts into the meat during the long cooking.
Onions
Fried until pale brown, they add sweetness and depth to the gravy.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps tenderise the meat and brightens the braising liquid.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and richness to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 5 hours. Low, gentle heat breaks down the tough connective tissue in flank beef slowly, making it tender. Boiling hard would toughen the muscle fibres and dry the meat, so the pan should only barely simmer.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

More beef à la mode recipes

French 3 See all 169 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes