Not Your Average Pot Roast, from 1796
A La Mode des Francais, Anglais, Américains
The expression "à la mode," as used appended to apple pie in modern American English, makes no sense: apple pie in the style or fashion of . . . what? Or whom? Have we slovenly Americans yet again, in importing vocabulary and cuisine from France, robbed both of their native clarity and elegance? Not really. It turns out that long before apple pie topped with vanilla ice cream, another "à la mode" dish was so widely loved that there was in that case as well no need to fill in the blank after the "de." This was, in the Anglophone world, "beef a la mode." Nor was the American Amelia Simmons the first to make the usage even more casual by turning the phrase into a verb that served as shorthand for the entire process of cooking the dish: "To alamode a round." The English author Elizabeth Raffald had pulled a similar stunt three decades before: "To a-la-mode beef."
In this instance, as in so many others, the Anglo-Americans adopted and adapted their linguistic practice, as well as their cookery, from the French. For evidence we turn to none other than Marcel Proust, who sees fit near the end of his masterpiece Remembrance of Things Past to compare his entire vast novel to this particular bit of informally denominated cookery: "since in this book the individual entities, human or otherwise, would be constructed from numerous impressions which, derived from many young girls, many churches, many sonatas, would go to make up a single sonata, a single church, a single young girl, would I not be making my book the way Françoise [the family cook] made her boeuf à la mode . . . the jelly of which was enriched by so many carefully selected pieces of meat?"
The Ingredients
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon marjoram
½ teaspoon thyme
⅛ - ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ teaspoon mace
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
⅓ pound salt pork, minced
2 ½ - 3 pounds boneless bottom round beef
3⅔ cups all-purpose flour
8 tablespoons (1 stick), butter
⅓ cup ice water
3 beef marrow bones
1 onion, quartered
1 bottle red wine (we used Merlot)
¾ cup water
breadcrumbs
How We Made It
The first part of the process we executed, as Simmons directs, the day before the actual cooking. We mixed the herbs and spices together, coated the minced salt pork with the mixture, cut slits in the beef, and, with a skewer, pushed the coated pieces of salt pork into the slits, sprinkling the remaining seasoning mixture over the top. We tied the roast up with string, wrapped it in plastic wrap, and stored it overnight in the refrigerator.
The next day, we preheated the oven to 300°. While bringing the round up to room temperature, we made Catharine Beecher's "plain" pie paste. This was not to be eaten but rather to be used as part of an air-tight seal on the pot in which the round was to be slow-cooked. We put the flour in a food processor, cut the butter in with it in pea-sized pieces, and, with the processor running at low speed, poured in the ice water until a paste formed. We molded the paste into two discs, wrapped them in plastic wrap, and chilled them for half an hour. While they were chilling, we placed the marrow bones in the pot, put the round on top of them, and added the onion, wine, and water.
It was time to seal the pot up nice and tight, so we got out one of the two plain paste discs, rolled it out, draped it over the beef (crimping it around the edge of the pot), and placed the pot lid over it.
Now into the oven for two hours, during which time we rolled out the second of the paste discs. After two hours, we took the pot out of the oven, uncovered the roast, discarded the first paste cover, turned the roast over (making sure it remained atop the marrow bones), placed the second paste cover over the roast and around the edge of the pot, put the pot lid back on, and returned the pot to the oven for two more hours.
After a total of four hours, we took the roast out again, increased the oven temperature to 425°, removed the pot lid, discarded the second paste cover, turned the roast back over, spread the breadcrumbs over the top, and returned the pot uncovered to the oven for 45 minutes, until the breadcrumbs were nicely browned.
After four hours in the double-sealed pot, and 45 minutes of cooking down, the wine, the drippings from the round, and the emanations and aromas from the marrow bones had combined into a rich gravy of which Proust (though probably not Françoise) might have grudgingly approved. We served it up with some roasted potatoes, carrots, and onions, some kale, a good loaf of country French bread, and a bit of the same wine that had gone into the pot.
We relished every bite! Amelia Simmons's original recipe, with commentary, can be found in Northern Hospitality, p. 234.