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Beef a LA Mode

A baked beef dish with bacon, carrots, turnips, onions, and bay leaves, covered with a pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Oven, in the book's wordsA steady oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a steady oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Assemble the dish

  1. Cover the bottom of a pudding dish with thin strips of bacon.

  2. Layer half the beef in the dish.

  3. Add a layer of sliced carrots, turnips, and onions.

  4. Repeat with the remaining beef and vegetables.

  5. Add the broken bay leaves.

  6. Pour stock over the layers until covered.

Seal and bake

  1. Make a paste with flour and water.

  2. Roll the paste out.

  3. Cover the dish tightly to seal in steam.

  4. Bake for 2 hours.

  5. Remove the paste cover and serve immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  5. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during long, slow cooking in liquid.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that seeps into the beef and vegetables as they cook.
Stock
Supplies the cooking liquid that braises the beef and builds the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid and helps form the paste that seals the dish.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and hold their shape through the long braise.

The step that matters

Seal the dish tightly before baking. The paste cover traps steam so the meat braises in its own moisture for two hours. A loose seal lets steam escape, which can dry the beef and reduce the sauce too much.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, flour. 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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