Skip to main content
Main

Beef a LA Mode

A slow‑cooked beef roast with carrots, onions, celery, and garlic in broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large pot, heat olive oil over medium heat.

  3. Sear the beef roast on all sides until browned.

Braise

  1. Remove the roast and add carrots, onions, celery, and garlic to the pot.

  2. Cook until vegetables are softened, about 5 minutes.

  3. Return the beef to the pot, add broth, salt, pepper, and bay leaf.

  4. Cover and bake in the oven for 2 to 3 hours until tender.

Serve

  1. Let rest before slicing and 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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Garlic + olivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 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 roast
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through slow, moist cooking.
Beef broth
Provides liquid for slow braising, keeping the meat moist as it softens.
Onions
Soften and build savory sweetness as the base of the braising liquid.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the braising liquid.
Celery
Adds savory aroma and depth to the braising liquid.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma that mellows during long cooking.

The step that matters

Sear the beef roast on all sides until browned. Browning through the Maillard reaction builds deep, savory flavor on the meat's surface. Pale, under-seared meat yields a flatter-tasting braise, so the surface should be evenly browned before the roast goes into the liquid.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, onion, celery, garlic, pepper, olive):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, onion, celery, garlic, pepper, olive. 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

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes