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A La Mode Beef
Miss Sarah Page.
Take a piece of beef four or five inches thick, and with a knife make small holes entirely through it at slight distances apart. Then take strips of fat salt pork, roll them in pepper and cloves. Lay on a pan, cover closely, and put over in a steamer, and steam for three hours. When done, thicken the gravy in the pan with a little flour. This is excellent when eaten as cold meat.
A larded pot roast cooked by steam rather than in liquid, which keeps a lean cut from drying out while the salt pork bastes it from within. The hinge is the larding: without the fat strips running through it, a four-inch piece of beef steamed for three hours is dull and stringy.
- The cut"A piece of beef four or five inches thick" points to a thick-cut round, rump or chuck roast; the recipe gives no weight, so the size of the joint is left to the cook. Anything already well marbled defeats the purpose; this method exists to rescue lean muscle.
- Larding without a needleA sharpening steel or the handle of a wooden spoon will drive a channel through the roast, and the pork strips can be pushed after it. Cut the salt pork into batons about the thickness of a pencil so they do not fall out during handling.
- Salt pork todayModern salt pork is generally milder than the barrel-cured pork of the period, though the strength of old cures varied. Unsmoked bacon or pork belly works as a substitute; if the pork tastes aggressively salty raw, blanch the strips a minute and pat dry before rolling in the spice.
- SeasoningNo salt is specified for the beef itself, presumably because the pork was expected to supply it. Season the outside of the roast, and use whole cloves sparingly in the pepper-and-clove roll: three or four cloves ground into a tablespoon of black pepper is plenty for a whole roast.
- "Put over in a steamer"The pan of beef sits covered above boiling water, not in it. A roasting pan on a rack inside a large stockpot, or a covered dish in a wide steamer insert, reproduces it. Check the water level hourly; three hours will boil a pot dry.
- Time and donenessThree hours of steam brings a thick roast well past medium into pot-roast territory, which is the intent. Test with a fork rather than a thermometer: it should yield with light pressure, around 195F internal for a chuck cut.
- The gravySteaming yields less pan liquid than braising, and there may be very little of it. Whisk a tablespoon of flour into a little cold water, stir it in, and simmer two or three minutes; if it is too scant, stretch it with stock rather than adding more flour.
- Serving coldThe note about cold meat is the real recommendation. Chill the roast whole, under weight if you want tidy slices, and cut it thin across the grain the next day. A piece this thick will serve a table hot and still leave sandwich meat.
"A la mode" beef reached English and American kitchens from the French boeuf à la mode, a larded and slowly cooked joint that by the nineteenth century was familiar enough in London that à-la-mode beef shops sold it by the plate. What the French did in a sealed pot with wine and aromatics, this version does with steam alone, and the difference is telling: The Home Cook Book was compiled in 1874 by Chicago women who signed their contributions by name, and much of what they submitted favours the cheap cut, the long unattended cooking, and the second meal. Steaming let the roast go on the stove above whatever else was boiling, and the closing line about cold meat is not an afterthought but the point of making so large a piece at once. Larding — threading lean meat with fat — was a common technique in kitchens working with grass-fed, hard-worked beef, and it is often said to have faded as fattier, better-marbled beef made it less necessary.