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Dessert

Beef a LA Mode

A roasted beef stuffed with bread crumbs and spices, cooked with fat pork and gravy made from butter, lard, flour, walnut catsup, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Wash and wipe the round of beef; cut out the bone and fill the cavity with a rich stuffing made of bread crumbs seasoned with pepper, salt, and onions.

  2. Mix 1 teaspoon each of salt, pepper, cloves, mace, and nutmeg; make incisions in the beef and insert strips of fat pork rolled in the spice mixture.

  3. Sprinkle the remaining spices over the beef and cover it with fat pork to prevent burning.

  4. Tie the beef with kitchen twine and skewer it to keep it in place.

Bake and finish

  1. Place the beef in an oven with at least 3 quarts of water and bake for 5 to 6 hours, basting constantly with a mixture of butter and lard combined with a small amount of flour.

  2. When nearly done, skim off the fat and thicken the gravy; season with walnut catsup and wine.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 roast, and its connective tissue softens into tender meat during long, slow baking.
Fat pork
Strips and a covering that add moisture and richness, protecting the beef from drying and burning.
Bread crumbs
Soak up juices and fat inside the cavity, keeping the stuffing moist and giving it body.
Butter and lard
Basting fats that carry flavor over the surface and promote browning.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth to the gravy when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Long, slow baking in water. Five to six hours at a low, steady heat lets the tough connective tissue in the round break down into gelatin, so the meat turns tender rather than dry. Keeping water in the pan and basting regularly helps prevent the surface from drying out and scorching over that long time.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, pepper, clove, nutmeg, pork, butter. 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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