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Beef a LA Mode

A roasted rump beef stuffed with salt pork and spices, braised with Madeira wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut deep openings in the rump beef with a sharp knife.

  2. Stuff the openings with salt pork strips rolled in pepper, salt, cloves, allspice, and nutmeg.

  3. Rub the spice mixture into the beef.

Roast

  1. Place the beef in a roasting pan and add a little water.

  2. Pour ½ pint of Madeira wine over the beef.

  3. Cook in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 2.5 hours until tender.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 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

Rump beef
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender with long, slow cooking.
Salt pork
Adds fat that melts into the meat, keeping it moist and rich in flavor.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and aroma, and its liquid helps braise the beef in the pan.

The step that matters

Cooking until tender. Rump is a tough cut, and its connective tissue only softens into gelatin after a long, slow cook at low heat. Stopping early leaves the meat chewy, so it should be cooked until it is fork-tender.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Cinnamonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, pepper, clove, allspice, madeira wine. 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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