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Beef a LA Mode

A slow‑cooked beef stew with bacon, vinegar, herbs, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice and fry the onions until pale brown.

  2. Cut the other vegetables into small pieces.

  3. Prepare the beef by cutting the bacon into long slices, about 1 inch thick. Dip the bacon slices into vinegar, then into a mixture of spices and minced herbs.

  4. Make deep holes in the beef to insert the bacon.

  5. Rub the beef with the remaining seasoning and herbs, then bind it into shape with kitchen twine.

Braise and serve

  1. In a well-tinned stew pan, place the beef, vegetables, vinegar, and water.

  2. Simmer gently for 5 hours, turning the meat once or twice.

  3. When ready to serve, remove the beef and tape, placing it on a hot dish. Skim off fat from the gravy, add port wine, bring to a boil, and pour over the beef.

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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Allspice + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef flank
Forms the main body of the roast, becoming tender through long, gentle simmering.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that melts into the meat during the long simmer.
Vinegar
Acidity helps tenderise the beef and brightens the flavour of the braising liquid.
Onions
Fried until pale brown, they add sweetness and depth to the gravy.
Carrots
Release sweetness and body into the braising liquid, forming the base of the gravy.
Port wine
Added to the reduced gravy at the end, contributing sweetness and rich flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 5 hours. A gentle simmer lets collagen in the flank slowly break down into gelatin, making the meat tender. Boiling vigorously toughens the muscle fibres and can leave the beef dry and stringy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, vinegar, pepper, allspice, parsley, carrot, turnip. 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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