To alamode a round

History

This is beef cooked the slow way: a whole round, weighing as much as sixteen pounds in one version, larded or stuffed with pork fat and driven through with spice, then left for hours in wine and steam until a tough cut turns tender. Simmons prints three versions of it. In the first, the round is cured with saltpetre for two days, packed with a forcemeat of minced beef, salt pork, grated bread and butter seasoned with cayenne, summer savory and thyme, then set on skewers over hot water and steamed four or five hours before the gravy is thickened and the meat browned with butter, flour, ketchup and wine. The second is the leanest and most classical: fat pork is cut into slivers, seasoned with pepper, salt, sweet marjoram, thyme, cloves, mace and nutmeg, and threaded into holes cut in the beef the night before; the round then stews on a bed of bones in a quart of Claret and a quart of water with an onion, the pot sealed shut with a rim of dough, until a grated bread crust is browned on top and the gravy sent to table in a butter boat. The third stuffs the round with pork, butter, bread, hard-boiled egg and a green tangle of marjoram, sage, parsley and savory, studs it with whole cloves, then binds it in a cloth with yards of twine so it holds its round shape through three or four hours in wine and water.

The name carries some of the history. *A la mode* is French for "in the fashion," and by the middle of the eighteenth century English cooks were printing receipts under that name for exactly this kind of beef: a lean cut larded thick with seasoned bacon, then stewed long and slow. One English version cuts a buttock of beef into pieces, lards them with bacon, browns them, and stews them in two quarts of broth or gravy. Another dips the bacon in vinegar and rolls it in spice before larding the beef "very thick and nice." Simmons's three versions sit squarely in that tradition: larding fat through a lean cut to baste it from within, sealing the pot to trap the steam, and leaning hard on cloves, mace and nutmeg were the method's defining gestures. What she Americanizes is the seasoning and the finish, the cayenne, the saltpetre cure, the bread stuffing and the ketchup.

Simmons herself says none of this. She gives no origin, never notes that the phrase is French, and offers no reason for printing three near-identical rounds, one of them shelved apart from the others among the pickles and sundries rather than with the meats. Nor does the book tell us whose table this beef was meant for, or whether the differences between the three, a cure here, a Claret braise there, a cloth-bound round in the third, record competing household habits or simply one cook writing down the dish more than once. The record keeps the method and loses the rest.

One thing we could not stand behind: an earlier version of this note said the French dish was braised in wine. The English receipts we were able to read stew the larded beef in broth, in gravy, or with vinegar, and none of them uses wine. The French descent of the name we learned from popular reference and food-writing sources, and we were unable to locate the evidence they rest on.

Ingredients

• round of beef
• fat pork
• pepper and salt
• sweet marjoram and thyme
• cloves, mace and nutmeg
• 1 quart Claret wine
• 1 quart water
• 1 onion
• dough
• bread crust

Instructions

1. Season sliced or minced fat pork with pepper, salt, sweet marjoram, thyme, cloves, mace, and nutmeg.
2. Make holes in the beef and stuff it the night before cooking.
3. Lay bones across the bottom of the pot to keep the meat from burning.
4. Add 1 quart Claret wine, 1 quart water, and 1 onion, and lay the round on the bones.
5. Cover closely and seal the lid all round with dough.
6. In the morning, stew gently two hours; turn it, reseal, and stew two hours more.
7. When tender, grate a crust of bread over the top and brown it before the fire.
8. Skim the gravy, serve some in a butter boat and the rest in the dish.