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Beef a LA Mode

A spiced, larded beef roast stuffed with breadcrumbs, suet, parsley, thyme, and onion, baked with gravy and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 over the beef, moistened with vinegar.

  3. Fill the hole where the bone was removed with seasoned stuffing of breadcrumbs, suet, parsley, thyme, and onion.

  4. Skewer and shape the beef.

  5. Lard the beef with strips of fat bacon.

Cook

  1. Place the beef on a small tripod in a baking dish.

  2. Put the beef in the oven.

  3. Baste the meat continually with lard and gravy.

  4. Half an hour before the meat is done, pour over it ½ cup of red wine mixed with 1 tablespoon of flour.

  5. Cook for four to five hours.

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

Round of beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and sliceable after long slow cooking.
Fat bacon
Larding strips add fat that melts into the meat, keeping it moist during the long cook.
Red wine (in the method)
Adds acidity and flavour to the sauce, and the flour mixed in helps thicken it.
Vinegar
Moistens the spice mixture and its acidity helps tenderise the beef's surface.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown and deepen the colour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the wine and flour half an hour before the end. Flour stirred into wine only thickens the sauce when heated, and adding it too early can make the gravy gluey or cause it to reduce unevenly. Timing it near the end keeps the sauce smooth and the beef moist.

Swap the coriander

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Corianderthe original

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