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Beef a LA Mode

A stuffed roast beef seasoned with spices, bread crumbs, and pork, then roasted with water and finished with egg yolks.

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.

Prepare the beef

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

  2. Rub the mixture into the beef.

  3. Let the beef sit overnight.

Stuff and tie

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

  2. Moisten the stuffing with milk or water.

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

  4. Stuff the moistened mixture into the beef.

  5. Secure the beef's ends with a skewer and bind the ends with tape.

Roast and finish

  1. Dredge the beef with flour.

  2. Place the beef in a dripping pan and pour hot water over the beef.

  3. Cover the beef with a large pan to retain steam.

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

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

  6. Skim fat from the gravy.

  7. Stir in beaten egg yolks 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. 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 of beef
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender during long, slow cooking.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat and moisture to the stuffing, keeping the lean stuffing from drying out.
Fine bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and liquid, giving the stuffing a soft, binding texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the gravy as they set, giving it a smoother body.
Onion
Adds savory aromatic flavor to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Roast low and covered with hot water and steam. Long, gentle heat at 300°F lets the tough connective tissue in the round break down into tenderness, while the covered pan and water keep the meat moist. Roasting too hot or too briefly leaves it dry and chewy.

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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