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Beef À LA Mode

A slow‑cooked flank steak stuffed with seasoned bacon and simmered with onions, carrots, turnip, celery, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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 À LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Rub the bacon slices in vinegar, then coat them with salt, black pepper, allspice, ground clove, and chopped herbs.

  2. Make deep holes in the beef and insert the seasoned bacon pieces.

  3. Bind the beef tightly with kitchen twine.

Braise

  1. In a well-tinned pot, fry the onions until brown, then add them to the beef with carrots, turnip, celery, and water.

  2. Simmer gently for 10–12 hours, turning the meat twice, until extremely tender.

  3. Remove the beef and keep it covered.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the gravy, remove the fat, and combine it with the beef and a glass of port wine.

  2. Remove the twine and serve with the vegetables.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

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

  5. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Flank beef
Provides the main meat that becomes tender through long, slow braising.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that bastes the lean beef from inside as it cooks.
Onions
Build a browned, sweet base flavor for the braising liquid and gravy.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the vegetables and gravy.
Celery
Contributes aromatic flavor and moisture to the braising liquid.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavor to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Long, gentle simmer. Collagen in flank beef only breaks down into gelatin with slow, low-heat cooking over many hours. Boiling hard or rushing the simmer leaves the meat tough and stringy, so keep the liquid at a gentle simmer throughout.

Swap the chive

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Chivethe original

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