Skip to main content
Starter

Beef a LA Mode

A stew of beef with ground rice, stock, bay leaves, peppercorns, onion, garlic, mushroom ketchup, and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Remove the dripping or fat from the meat and mix it with the ground rice to form a smooth paste.

  2. Add the seasoning and stock, bring to a boil, then simmer for 15 to 20 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Skim the surface, return to the pan, and add a little browning.

  2. Cut the meat into even pieces and warm it in the sauce.

  3. Serve very hot.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Rice + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,515 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  5. Clove + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that the meat simmers in.
Meat
Provides the main body of the dish, tenderised as it simmers in the sauce.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury depth and umami to the sauce.

The step that matters

Forming the smooth paste. If the ground rice is added without being fully blended into the fat, it will form lumps rather than dissolve evenly. Working it into a smooth paste first lets it disperse, so the sauce thickens without graininess.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, rice, onion, mushroom, ketchup, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, rice, onion, mushroom, ketchup, pepper. 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.

More beef à la mode recipes

French 3 See all 169 →

You might also like

Deviled OystersDeviled Oysters25 recipes