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Beef a LA Mode

A stuffed roast of upper round beef seasoned with spices, bread crumbs, pork, and herbs, baked slowly.

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

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 spice rub

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

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

Make the stuffing

  1. Combine bread crumbs, diced pork, thyme, sage, pepper, nutmeg, cloves, and minced onion.

  2. Moisten the mixture with milk or water.

Stuff and prepare the beef

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

  2. Secure the ends with a skewer and bind with tape.

  3. Make incisions in the beef and fill them with stuffing.

  4. Dredge the beef with flour.

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

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 at 300°F (150°C) for 3 to 4 hours.

  3. For hot serving, skim fat from the gravy.

  4. 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 during long, slow roasting.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing and meat moist and carries flavour.
Fine bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and fat, giving the stuffing a soft, cohesive body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the gravy as they set with gentle heat, giving it a richer texture.
Onion
Contributes savoury flavour to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Stir in beaten egg yolks after removing from heat. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat and can scramble if the gravy is too hot. Adding them off the heat and stirring briskly keeps the gravy smooth.

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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