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Beef a LA Mode

A roast beef dish stuffed with crumbs, marrow, garlic, herbs, and egg yolks, baked in 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 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Mix the crumbs, marrow, garlic, thyme, parsley, nutmeg, cloves, pepper, salt, and egg yolks to form a paste.

  3. Stuff the lean part of the beef with the mixture and form balls with the remainder.

  4. Sew a strip of linen around the beef to keep it compact.

Braise

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

  2. Cover the vessel with sheets of tin or iron.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven for 3 hours.

Finish and serve

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

  2. Stir in the mushroom and walnut catsup.

  3. Serve garnished with fried forcemeat balls.

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, becoming tender through long slow braising.
Egg yolks
Bind the stuffing paste so it holds together during cooking.
Red wine
Provides liquid for braising and flavours the gravy.
Brown flour
Thickens the skimmed braising liquid into a gravy.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing body and a light texture.
Marrow
Adds richness and fat that keeps the stuffing moist.

The step that matters

Covering the vessel before baking. Sealing the vessel traps steam so the beef braises in its own moisture and wine rather than drying out over three hours of oven heat.

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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