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Beef a LA Mode

A stuffed beef roast seasoned with spices, bread crumbs, pork, and herbs, roasted slowly with water.

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

Season and stuff

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

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

  3. In the morning, prepare the stuffing with bread crumbs, diced pork, thyme, sage, pepper, nutmeg, cloves, minced onion, and moisten with milk or water.

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

  5. Use a long skewer to secure the ends of the beef and bind it with tape.

  6. Make incisions in the beef and fill them with stuffing, then dredge the beef with flour.

Roast and serve

  1. Place the beef in a dripping pan, pour hot water over it, and cover with a large pan to retain steam.

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

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

  4. If serving hot, skim the fat from the gravy and 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

Upper round beef
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender with long, slow cooking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and liquid from the stuffing, giving it a soft, cohesive texture.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that keeps the stuffing moist during roasting.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory depth to the stuffing.
Eggs
Beaten yolks stirred into the gravy enrich and thicken it, adding body and richness.

The step that matters

Slow roasting in a covered pan. Beef from a tough cut needs low, moist heat so connective tissue breaks down gradually. Covering the pan traps steam, which keeps the meat from drying out while it cooks through.

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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