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Jellied Beef a LA Mode

A cold beef dish made by simmering beef and veal, then clarifying the gravy with egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Jellied Beef a LA Mode

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Lard the beef with seasoned fat pork.

Simmer

  1. Place the meat in a large stewpan with water, pepper, and salt.

  2. Cover and simmer for 3 hours.

  3. Add sliced carrots and onions, and boil for 2 to 3 more hours.

Clarify and serve

  1. Remove the meat and clarify the gravy with the egg white.

  2. Boil the gravy for a few minutes and pour it over the meat.

  3. Serve cold.

  4. Optionally, add wine for flavor.

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

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

  2. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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

Beef
Provides the main body of meat that becomes tender during long simmering.
Egg white
Collects particles in the gravy during clarifying, leaving it clear.
Veal knuckle
Adds gelatin-rich connective tissue that helps the gravy set when cold.
Fat pork
Adds fat and savoury flavor to the lean beef as it is larded.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the simmering liquid.

The step that matters

Clarify the gravy with the egg white. Egg white proteins coagulate and trap cloudy particles as the liquid heats. Stirring too vigorously or boiling hard breaks the raft apart, leaving the jelly murky.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, pork, pepper, onion, egg):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, pork, pepper, onion, egg. 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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