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A-LA-mode Beef, — the Bath Receipt.

A stew of beef seasoned with herbs, spices, bacon, and vinegar, baked and served with pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

A-LA-mode Beef, — the Bath Receipt.

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Trim the beef and remove all fat.

  2. Finely chop the sweet herbs and shallot, then mix with spices and vinegar in a saucer.

  3. Dip the bacon in the herb mixture and lard the beef on both sides.

  4. Rub the remaining herbs and spices over the beef.

Bake and serve

  1. Flour the meat, add the butter, and pour in the water.

  2. Bake the beef at 350°F (175°C) until cooked through.

  3. Strain the gravy and serve with pickles on top.

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 + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Shallot + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef rump
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender during slow cooking.
Bacon
Adds fat and moisture that larding carries through the meat as it cooks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the herb-and-spice flavour and helps tenderise the beef.
Butter
Adds richness and helps enrich the gravy with flour as a thickener.

The step that matters

Lard the beef evenly with bacon. Bacon strips threaded through the lean meat supply fat and moisture from inside, so the beef stays juicy rather than dry during the long bake.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, shallot, pepper, vinegar, garlic, butter, flour):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, shallot, pepper, vinegar, garlic, butter, flour. 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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