Beef A La Mode
Take a round of beef, remove the bone from the middle, also all the gristle and tough parts about the edges. Have ready half a pound of fat salt pork; cut into strips as thick and long as your finger. Prepare a nice dressing, the same as for stuffing a turkey. With a sharp knife make incisions in the meat, about half an inch apart, thrust into them the pork and also some of the dressing. Proceed thus until the meat is thoroughly plugged. Put into a baking pan with a little water at the bottom; cover tightly and bake slowly four hours; then uncover and spread the rest of the dressing over the top, and bake until nicely browned. After taking up, thicken the gravy and pour over the beef.
A larded, stuffed pot roast that predates the modern rump roast by a couple of centuries. The whole thing hinges on low, moist, covered heat — this is a braise wearing the costume of a roast.
- "A round of beef"A full round from a period butcher could run 15 lb or more. A 4–5 lb piece of top or bottom round, tied, behaves the same way and serves 8–10; the boning and gristle-trimming the recipe describes will already have been done for you.
- Bake slowly"Slow" is not defined in the book; a slow oven was conventionally reckoned somewhere in the region of 275-325F, and four hours there suits a large round. A 4-5 lb piece will be fork-tender nearer 3 hours; go by feel, not the clock.
- LardingThe strips of fat salt pork are not seasoning but insurance — round is very lean and dries out. A larding needle makes this far easier than a knife; failing that, cut deep slits with a thin boning knife and push the pork through with the handle of a wooden spoon.
- Salt porkSalt pork is very salty. Rinse it, or soak the strips 20 minutes in cold water, or the finished gravy will be inedible. Thick-cut unsmoked bacon is a reasonable stand-in.
- "A nice dressing"A turkey stuffing of this period would typically be bread, onion, butter, sage or summer savory, salt and pepper; no egg is needed for the part being pushed into the meat. Make it on the dry side; a wet stuffing will not thrust into an incision.
- Cover tightlyCast iron with a lid or a roasting pan sealed with foil. Only "a little water" is called for because the beef gives up plenty of its own; too much and you poach rather than braise.
- The browning stageThe recipe gives no temperature for this stage; uncovered at the end, a hotter oven for 20-30 minutes will let the top layer of dressing crisp rather than merely dry.
- Thickening the gravySkim the fat first, then whisk in a flour-and-water slurry or a beurre manié and simmer two or three minutes to cook out the raw flour. Taste before salting — the pork will have done much of it.
- CarvingRest 15 minutes, then slice thin across the grain. Round cut with the grain, however tender, eats stringy.
À la mode means simply "in the fashion," and the French bœuf à la mode — a large lean cut larded with pork fat and braised for hours with wine and aromatics — was well established by the eighteenth century. The dish crossed the Channel and the Atlantic and shed most of its French seasoning on the way: by the time it reached American household manuals like this one, the wine and calf's foot had generally given way to a little water and a turkey-style bread dressing, which is very much an English-American habit rather than a French one. Larding was standard practice for any lean cut in an era before marbled, grain-finished beef was common, and the round — cheap, large, and worked hard by the animal — was exactly the sort of joint that needed it. The name lingered long enough in the nineteenth century to become a shop sign: "beef à la mode" houses in London sold the braise by the plate.