Skip to main content
Main

Beef a LA Mode

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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.

  4. Prepare the stuffing with bread crumbs, diced pork, thyme, sage, pepper, nutmeg, cloves, and minced onion.

  5. Moisten the stuffing with milk or water.

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

  7. Fasten the ends of the beef together with a skewer.

  8. Bind the beef with tape.

  9. Make incisions in the beef.

  10. Fill the incisions with stuffing.

Roast and finish

  1. Dredge the whole beef with flour.

  2. Place the beef in a dripping pan.

  3. Pour hot water over the beef.

  4. Cover with a large pan to retain steam and roast at 300°F (150°C) for 3 to 4 hours, allowing 15 minutes per pound.

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

  6. Brown the meat in the oven.

  7. If serving hot, skim fat from the gravy.

  8. Stir in beaten yolks of 2 eggs 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, cooked slowly, becomes tender and sliceable.
Fat salt pork
Melts during roasting, adding fat and moisture to the stuffing and the surrounding meat.
Fine bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and liquid, giving the stuffing a soft, cohesive body.
Eggs (in the method)
Beaten yolks enrich and thicken the gravy as they set with gentle heat.
Flour
Dredging coats the outside, helping the surface brown and thickening the pan juices.

The step that matters

Roasting at low heat under a covered pan. Collagen in tough beef breaks down into gelatin only with long, moist, gentle heat. Cooking too hot or too briefly leaves the meat chewy, so the covered pan and long roast time matter.

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.

More beef à la mode recipes

French 3 See all 169 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipes