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Beef a LA Mode

A stuffed beef rump cooked with currant jelly, lemon, and vegetables, finished with sour cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Make deep openings in the beef rump with a sharp knife.

  2. Stuff the openings with diced pork rolled in pepper, salt, cloves, and nutmeg.

Braise

  1. In an iron stewpan, layer sliced pork, onions, lemon, carrots, and bay leaf.

  2. Place the stuffed beef on top and cover with the bread crust.

  3. Add currant jelly, lemon juice, and enough water or broth to cover the meat halfway.

  4. Cover the dish tightly and cook until the meat is tender.

Make the gravy

  1. Remove the meat and strain the gravy through a sieve.

  2. Skim off the fat and stir in sour cream, then return to the stewpan and cook for 10 minutes.

  3. Optionally, add capers, sliced cucumber pickles, or grated gingerbread to the gravy.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef rump
Lean, firm roast meat that becomes tender and juicy through long, slow, covered cooking.
Diced pork
Stuffed into the beef, adding fat and richness that keeps the meat moist as it cooks.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body to the gravy, balancing the sharp lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the gravy and helps balance the sweetness of the jelly.
Sour cream
Stirred into the strained gravy to add tang and a smooth, creamy body.
Onion
Sliced onions in the base release sweetness and aroma into the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Cook until the meat is tender. Beef rump is lean and firm, so it needs long, gentle, covered cooking. Connective tissue breaks down slowly; rushing or boiling hard leaves the meat tough and dry.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, pepper, clove, nutmeg, onion, carrot. 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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