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Beef a LA Mode

Beef à la Mode is a stuffed beef roast flavored with spices, breadcrumbs, and pork, slow roasted and finished with gravy enriched with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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

Season the beef

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

  2. Rub the mixture into the beef and let it sit overnight.

  3. In the morning, combine bread crumbs, diced pork, thyme, sage, pepper, nutmeg, cloves, and minced onion.

  4. Moisten the mixture with milk or water.

Stuff and prepare

  1. Stuff the mixture into the beef where the bone was removed.

  2. Use a skewer to secure the ends and bind the beef with tape.

  3. Make incisions in the beef and fill with stuffing.

  4. Dredge the entire beef with flour.

Roast and serve

  1. Place the beef in a dripping pan.

  2. Pour hot water over the beef.

  3. Cover with a large pan to retain steam.

  4. Roast slowly for 3 to 4 hours, allowing 15 minutes per pound.

  5. If the meat is tough, stew it in water until tender before browning in the oven.

  6. For a hot serving, skim fat from the gravy.

  7. Stir in beaten yolks of 2 eggs after removing the beef from heat.

  8. Omit onion if desired and substitute minced oysters.

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

Upper round beef
Forms the main body of the roast, which becomes tender with slow cooking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and hold the stuffing together while it cooks.
Salt fat pork
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and carries flavor through the roast.
Eggs (in the method)
Yolks enrich the gravy and help it thicken and bind when stirred in.

The step that matters

Roast slowly under a covered pan. Slow, covered roasting with added hot water keeps steam around the meat, so tough connective tissue softens before the surface dries out.

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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