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Beef a LA Mode

A stuffed roast of upper round beef seasoned with spices, bread crumbs, pork, and herbs, baked slowly and finished with a yolk gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Season and rest

  1. Mix salt, pepper, ginger, mace, cinnamon, and cloves.

  2. Rub the mixture into the beef.

  3. Let the beef sit overnight.

Make and stuff

  1. Combine bread crumbs, diced pork, thyme, sage, pepper, nutmeg, cloves, and minced onion.

  2. Moisten the stuffing with a little milk or water.

  3. Stuff the moistened mixture into the beef.

  4. Secure the beef's ends with a skewer.

  5. Bind the ends with tape.

  6. Make incisions in the beef and fill them with stuffing.

Roast and finish

  1. Dredge the beef with flour.

  2. Place the beef in a dripping pan.

  3. Pour hot water over the beef.

  4. Cover the beef with a large pan to keep in steam.

  5. Roast at 300°F (150°C) for 3 to 4 hours.

  6. If the meat is tough, stew it in water until tender before roasting.

  7. Skim off fat from the cooking liquid.

  8. Stir in beaten egg yolks after removing from heat.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef upper round
Forms the main body of the dish and is the meat that becomes tender through slow roasting.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the stuffing so it holds its shape inside the beef.
Salt pork
Adds fat and richness that keeps the stuffing and lean beef moist during long cooking.
Egg yolks
Enrich the cooking liquid and thicken it slightly when stirred in off the heat.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and flavor to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Stir in beaten egg yolks after removing from heat. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat and can scramble or curdle if they meet a boiling liquid, so they are added off the heat and stirred in smoothly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, ginger, cinnamon, clove, beef, bread, pork):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, ginger, cinnamon, clove, beef, bread, pork. 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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