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Beef A-LA-mode

Beef à la Mode is a roast beef stuffed with forcemeat, baked with wine and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the beef

  1. Remove the bone from the round of beef and fill the space with a forcemeat made from the crumbled stale loaf, marrow, garlic, thyme, parsley, nutmeg, cloves, pepper, salt, and beaten egg yolks.

  2. Stuff the lean part of the beef with the forcemeat and form balls with any remaining mixture.

  3. Sew a fillet of strong linen around the beef to keep it compact.

Bake

  1. Place the beef in a vessel large enough to hold it and add the red wine.

  2. Cover the vessel with sheets of tin or iron and bake in a preheated brick oven at 400°F (200°C) for three hours.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Once done, skim the fat from the gravy, thicken it with brown flour, and add mushroom and walnut ketchup.

  2. Serve garnished with fried forcemeat balls.

  3. It is also delicious when eaten cold with salad.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Round of beef
Forms the main body of the dish and supplies the rich meat flavor during long cooking.
Stale loaf
Acts as a binder in the forcemeat, soaking up juices and keeping the stuffing light.
Marrow
Adds fat to the forcemeat, keeping it moist and rich as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Bind the forcemeat together and add richness as they set when heated.
Red wine
Provides moisture and acidity during braising, and flavors the gravy.
Brown flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the meat and serving spoon.

The step that matters

Cover the vessel with sheets of tin or iron. Covering traps steam around the beef so it braises in the wine rather than drying out during the long bake.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, thyme, parsley, nutmeg, clove, pepper, egg):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, thyme, parsley, nutmeg, clove, pepper, 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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