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Beef a LA Mode

A slow‑cooked beef dish flavored with bacon, vinegar, spices, and ale, finished with a thickened port wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 23 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 450 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the bone from the beef and cut the bacon into long strips.

  2. Dip the bacon strips in a mixture of common and shallot vinegar.

  3. Roll the bacon in a seasoning of nutmeg, black pepper, Jamaica pepper, cloves, salt, parsley, chives, lemon-thyme, marjoram, and savoury.

  4. Lard the beef thickly with the bacon.

  5. Bind the beef with tape.

  6. Rub the outside of the beef with the seasoning.

Stew

  1. Place the beef in a saucepan with lemon rind, onions, carrots, and turnips.

  2. Add the ale and vinegar.

  3. Stew for 6–8 hours, turning it 2–3 times.

  4. Half an hour before serving, remove the beef and vegetables.

Finish the sauce

  1. Skim off the fat from the sauce.

  2. Strain the sauce.

  3. Thicken the sauce with a mixture of flour and water.

  4. Add the port wine.

  5. Return everything to the pot and let it boil before serving.

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. Shallot + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox beef
Main cut that becomes tender as its connective tissue slowly breaks down during long stewing.
Bacon fat
Melts into the meat during cooking, adding moisture, richness and savoury flavour.
Strong ale
Forms the braising liquid that flavours the beef and builds the body of the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and helps soften the meat's surface during marinating.
Onions
Break down during stewing, adding sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the strained sauce so it coats the meat and vegetables.

The step that matters

Stewing for 6–8 hours. Collagen in the beef breaks down into gelatin only with long, gentle, moist heat. Rushing the stew or boiling it hard leaves the meat tough and stringy, so keep it at a slow simmer and turn it as directed.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, vinegar, shallot, pepper, clove, parsley, chive. 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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