Skip to main content
Main

Beef a LA Mode

A slow‑cooked beef dish marinated in vinegar and spices, braised with salt pork, onions, carrot, and herbs, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Wipe and trim the beef, then place it in a deep dish.

  2. Pour spiced vinegar over the beef and let it marinate for several hours, turning often.

  3. Lard the beef with strips of salt pork.

Braise

  1. Brown the beef in hot fat with fried onions and carrot.

  2. Add enough boiling water to nearly cover the beef.

  3. Boil the beef for 20 minutes.

  4. Add a small bag of mixed herbs.

  5. Transfer the beef to a slow oven for 5 to 6 hours.

  6. Adjust seasoning when ready to serve.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Thicken the gravy with flour.

  2. Boil the gravy for 5 minutes.

  3. Strain the gravy over the meat.

  4. Garnish with potato balls and small onions.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  3. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 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
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through long, slow cooking.
Vinegar
Acidity in the marinade helps soften the meat's surface and adds tang.
Salt pork
Its fat strips baste the lean beef from within as it cooks, adding moisture and richness.
Onions
Browned onions build savoury depth and sweetness in the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy by starch gelatinisation.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with flour. Flour must be cooked in the liquid long enough to lose its raw taste and gelatinise fully. Boiling the gravy afterwards for 5 minutes completes the thickening and keeps it smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, vinegar, mustard, pepper, clove, allspice, pork):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, vinegar, mustard, pepper, clove, allspice, pork. 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

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes