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Beef a LA Mode

A slow-roasted beef stuffed with bread, butter, onion, herbs, and spices, flavored with sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut off the skin and remove the bone from the beef.

  2. Rub the beef with salt and pepper.

  3. Make a rich stuffing with the bread, butter, onion, thyme, cloves, mace, and nutmeg.

  4. Stuff the beef where the bone was removed with the stuffing.

  5. Make incisions in the beef and insert slices of fat bacon, stuffing each incision with the remaining force-meat.

  6. Tie the beef firmly with string and sprinkle leftover stuffing on top.

  7. Refrigerate the beef overnight to allow the seasoning to penetrate.

Roast

  1. When ready to cook, place the beef in a roasting pan with 1 pint of water.

  2. Roast slowly for about four hours, basting frequently.

  3. Halfway through cooking, pour 1 pint of sherry wine over the beef and continue basting.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Thyme + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef
Long slow roasting breaks down tough connective tissue, leaving the meat tender and moist.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aroma, and its flavour carries into the braising liquid.
Fat bacon
Melts during roasting, adding fat that moistens the lean beef and flavours it.
Bread
Forms the base of the stuffing, soaking up butter and juices to stay moist.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing, helping it brown and taste rounded.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth to the stuffing as it cooks.

The step that matters

Slow roasting with frequent basting. Holding the heat low for hours lets tough collagen in the beef convert to gelatin, so the meat stays tender. If the roast dries out or the heat runs high, the outside toughens and the juices are lost.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pepper, onion, thyme, butter, clove, nutmeg):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, onion, thyme, butter, clove, nutmeg. 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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