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Beef a 'LA Mode

A slow‑cooked beef dish with carrots, onions, and sherry gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Beef a 'LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Lard the beef with the salt pork and bind with cheesecloth.

Braise

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and brown the meat with the carrot and onions for 20 minutes.

  2. Pour in the stock and sherry, then season with salt, pepper, and sweet herbs.

  3. Cover loosely and cook slowly for 2½ hours.

  4. Add the small carrots and cook for an additional 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the meat to a bright tin basin and arrange the carrots around it.

  2. Strain the gravy and cool for 2 hours, then turn the meat over.

  3. Garnish with parsley before serving.

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

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

Rump piece of beef
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through slow, long cooking.
Salt pork
Larded through the beef, it adds fat and savory flavor as it renders during cooking.
Stock
Forms the braising liquid that gives moisture and builds the gravy.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the braising liquid and gravy.
Onions
Browned at the start, they add sweetness and savory depth to the gravy.
Small carrots
Cooked in the braising liquid, they add sweetness and color around the meat.

The step that matters

Cooking slowly under a loose cover. Gentle, long simmering breaks down the tough connective tissue in rump so the meat becomes tender. Boiling hard would toughen the meat and reduce the gravy too quickly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, butter, carrot, sherry, pepper, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, butter, carrot, sherry, pepper, parsley. 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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