Skip to main content
Main

Beef a LA Mode

A slow‑cooked beef stew with calf's feet, bacon, carrots, onion, garlic, bouquet garni, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gather 5 lbs of thick flank of beef and 2 slices of fat bacon, each ½ inch thick.

  2. Remove the rind from the bacon and cut the rind into ½ inch strips, then sprinkle the strips with pepper.

  3. Tie the beef and lard it in the direction of its grain.

Braise

  1. Place the beef in a stewpan with 2 quarts of stock, the bacon rind, and 2 blanched, boned calf's feet, then bring the mixture to a boil and skim the surface.

  2. Add 4 small carrots, 1 onion with 3 cloves stuck in it, a bouquet garni, 1 clove of garlic, and a little pepper.

  3. Close the stewpan tightly and simmer slowly for 4 hours.

Reduce and serve

  1. Remove the beef, calf's feet, and carrots to keep warm, then remove all the fat from the liquid.

  2. Strain the liquid into another stewpan and reduce it over a brisk fire for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the string from the beef and place the beef on a dish.

  4. Garnish the beef with carrots and calf's feet, pour the reduced liquid over the beef, and serve the dish.

  5. For a cold dish, place the beef, calf's feet, vegetables, and liquid in a basin to gelatinize.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Flank of beef
Is the main cut that becomes tender and sliceable during long, slow simmering.
Calf's feet
Release gelatin into the liquid, giving it body and a glossy set when cooled.
Bacon fat and rind
Add fat and savory richness to the braising liquid and flavor the beef.
Stock
Provides the cooking liquid that braises the beef and becomes the reduced sauce.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and flavor to the liquid and serve as a garnish.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly with the pot tightly closed. A gentle simmer lets collagen in the beef and calf's feet slowly break down into gelatin, making the meat tender. A rolling boil toughens the meat and clouds the liquid.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, onion, garlic, 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

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes