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Beef Cl LA Mode

A spiced beef dish marinated in lard, cinnamon, cloves, pepper, chutney, and sauces, then boiled with vinegar and bay leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 18,971 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Lard the beef with lard, cinnamon, cloves, pepper, and chutney 24 hours before cooking.

  2. Mix chutney, pepper, and spices with mixed sauces.

  3. Cut lard into long slices.

  4. Soak the sliced lard in the sauce mixture for 2 hours.

  5. Lard the beef thoroughly with the soaked lard.

Cook

  1. Cook the beef the next day, adding vinegar, bay leaves, and peppercorns to the water, or substitute with claret or champagne.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Beef + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together18,971 recipes

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

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,027 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together13,144 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Cinnamon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together27,805 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Corned round of beef
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the flavour of the larding and sauce.
Lard
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the lean beef tender during long cooking.
Chutney
Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the rich, spiced flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps tenderise the meat and brighten the flavour.

The step that matters

Soaking the sliced lard in the sauce mixture. The lard needs time to absorb the spiced sauce so the flavour penetrates when it is pushed into the beef. Leaving it short of the full 2 hours gives weaker seasoning inside the meat.

Flavor stand-ins for the cinnamon

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

  1. Allspicebetter flavor fit
  2. Tarragonabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Gingerabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Cinnamonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove, pepper, sauce, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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