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Beef a LA Mode

A roasted beef seasoned with cloves, mace, allspice, savory, parsley, thyme, marjoram, vinegar, and bacon, served with pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the beef

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Trim excess fat from the beef and make a spice mix with cloves, mace, allspice, savory, parsley, thyme, marjoram, and vinegar.

  3. Roll bacon slices in the spice mix and make incisions in the beef to insert the bacon.

  4. Rub the remaining spice mix over the beef and dredge with flour.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the beef in a baking dish with butter and water.

  2. Bake in the oven until cooked through, then strain the gravy.

  3. Serve the beef 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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 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

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow, moist cooking.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour as it melts into the beef during cooking.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps tenderise the meat and balances the rich spices.
Flour
Coats the beef and thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and helps brown the surface of the beef.

The step that matters

Bake until cooked through. Beef needs enough time at oven heat to become tender, since connective tissue in leaner cuts only breaks down with sustained cooking. Checking doneness before straining the gravy keeps the meat from turning dry or tough.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove, allspice, parsley, thyme, marjoram, vinegar. 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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