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Beef a LA Mode

A slow‑cooked beef dish with claret, lemon, onions, carrots, and a brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim, bone, and lard the beef.

  2. Place the beef in a bowl with the claret, lemon juice, chopped onion, cloves, salt, pepper, and bouquet garni. Let it marinate for 2 hours, basting frequently.

Brown and braise

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan, drain the beef, and fry it until browned. Lightly fry the button onions at the same time.

  2. Remove the beef and onions from the stewpan.

  3. Add the flour and fry until it turns nut-brown.

  4. Stir in the stock and the marinade, and bring to a boil.

  5. Return the beef and onions to the stewpan, season to taste, add the sliced carrots, and cook gently for 2 to 3 hours, stirring and skimming occasionally.

Serve

  1. When done, place on a hot dish, strain the sauce over, and garnish with groups of onions and carrots.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 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

Rump of beef
Forms the main meat, which becomes tender during long, gentle braising.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the beef and onions and carries flavour.
Flour
Browned in the fat to thicken the sauce and add a nutty colour.
Claret
Wine in the marinade that adds acidity and flavour to the beef and sauce.
Lemon juice
Acidity in the marinade that brightens flavour and helps tenderise the meat.
Stock
Liquid base of the sauce that braises the beef slowly.

The step that matters

Frying the flour until nut-brown. Browning the flour in fat builds colour and toasted flavour for the sauce. Stop too early and the sauce tastes raw and pale; go too far and it turns bitter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, flour, carrot, parsley, thyme, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, flour, carrot, parsley, thyme, lemon. 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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