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Beef a LA Mode

A roast beef stuffed with pork strips and forcemeat, cooked slowly in a vinegar and herb sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove 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. Remove the bone from the middle of the beef.

  2. Bind the beef into a symmetrical shape with a wide strip of stout muslin.

Make the forcemeat

  1. Heat the vinegar in a saucepan with onions, mustard, nutmeg, cloves, brown sugar, and sweet herbs until boiling.

  2. Pour the mixture over the salt pork cut into strips.

  3. When cold, remove the pork and add enough bread crumbs to the liquid to make a stiff forcemeat.

Stuff and roast

  1. Make incisions in the beef every ½ inch and fill them with the pork strips and forcemeat.

  2. Stuff the hole where the bone was removed with the dressing and bits of pork.

  3. Rub the upper side of the roast with the same mixture.

  4. Place in a covered roasting pan half full of water and roast slowly for 4 hours.

  5. Let it cool in the gravy, then remove the muslin and carve into very thin slices.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 meat that becomes tender and juicy during long, slow roasting.
Vinegar
Acidity that helps tenderize the meat and balances the sweet and spiced flavours.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour that keeps the lean beef moist as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Bind the liquid into a stiff forcemeat that holds its shape within the beef.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown and glaze during roasting.
Made mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts through the richness of the beef and pork.

The step that matters

Slow roasting in a covered pan with water. Long, gentle heat breaks down the tough connective tissue in round of beef slowly, while the covered pan with water keeps the meat from drying out. Too much heat or too little liquid can leave it tough and dry.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, vinegar, onion, mustard, clove, sugar, pork):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, vinegar, onion, mustard, clove, sugar, 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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