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Beef a LA Mode

A stuffed beef roast filled with forcemeat, baked slowly with a gravy made from marrow, bacon fat, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Remove the bone from the beef.

  2. Make incisions all over the meat.

  3. Mix bread crumbs, onions, allspice, cloves, pepper, and salt for the forcemeat.

  4. Chop the marrow and mix it with bacon fat or lard.

  5. Combine the marrow mixture with the bread crumbs.

  6. Fill the cavity with rich forcemeat.

  7. Fill the incisions with the stuffing.

  8. Wrap the flap around the meat.

  9. Secure the flap with wooden pins to maintain shape.

Braise and make the gravy

  1. Place the beef in a pan without cramping.

  2. Add 1 pint of water to the pan.

  3. Bake slowly, basting frequently.

  4. When the gravy boils away, sprinkle 2 tablespoons of flour in one end of the pan to brown.

  5. Add 1-2 cups of rice gruel from the dinner rice.

  6. If the gravy is insufficient, mix 1 tablespoon of flour with cold water to make a paste.

  7. Stir the paste into the gravy.

  8. If the gravy is oily, pour some off.

  9. Add more flour and water.

  10. Season with pepper and salt.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 slow braising.
Bread crumbs
Bind the forcemeat and absorb juices, giving the stuffing a moist, tender body.
Marrow
Adds richness and fat that keeps the stuffing moist and flavourful.
Flour
Browns in the pan and thickens the gravy.
Rice gruel
Adds body and thickens the gravy as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the gravy. Flour must be cooked until it turns golden in the hot pan before liquid is added; raw flour tastes pasty and thickens unevenly, while properly browned flour gives the gravy colour and a nutty flavour.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, allspice, clove, pepper, pork, flour. 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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