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Beef a LA Mode

A stuffed beef roast seasoned with spices and bread crumbs, roasted slowly and finished with egg yolk gravy.

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

Prepare the beef

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

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

  3. In the morning, combine bread crumbs, diced pork, thyme, sage, pepper, nutmeg, cloves, and minced onion.

  4. Moisten the stuffing with a little milk or water and stuff it into the beef.

  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.

  7. Dredge the beef with flour.

Roast

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

  2. Cover with a large pan to keep in steam and roast slowly for 3 to 4 hours.

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

Finish the gravy

  1. For a hot serving, skim 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

Beef upper round
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through slow, moist roasting.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and liquid in the stuffing, giving it a soft, cohesive texture.
Salt pork fat
Adds fat to the stuffing, carrying flavor and keeping the filling moist during roasting.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the gravy when stirred in off the heat, giving it body and richness.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory depth to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Stirring egg yolks into the gravy. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat and can scramble if the gravy is too hot. Removing the pan from the heat before stirring them in lets them enrich the gravy smoothly.

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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