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A-LA-mode Beef, or Sour Meat

A cold beef dish marinated in vinegar, water, onion, spices, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

A-LA-mode Beef, or Sour Meat

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Stew

  1. Cover the beef with vinegar and water.

  2. Season with onion, pepper, salt, allspice, and bay leaves.

  3. Let it stew gently for 3-4 hours, depending on the weight of the meat.

Serve

  1. Serve cold for best flavor.

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. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Onion + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,270 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

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish; slow stewing breaks down its connective tissue so it becomes tender.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps soften the meat during the long stew.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid as it stews.
Bay leaves
Contribute a subtle herbal aroma to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Let it stew gently for 3-4 hours. Gentle, low heat over a long time converts the tough connective tissue in the beef into gelatin, which makes the meat tender. Boiling hard can toughen the meat and dry out the fibers, so the stew should only simmer and the time should follow the weight of the meat.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, vinegar, onion, pepper):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, vinegar, onion, 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.

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