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Beef Olives

Thin slices of beef rolled around a stuffing of bread crumbs, marrow and parsley, then browned and cooked in gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the slices with a rolling pin.

  2. Rub each slice with egg yolk, pepper, salt, mace, bread crumbs, marrow, parsley, and lemon rind.

  3. Roll up the slices tightly and skewer them closed.

Cook and serve

  1. Brown the rolls over a fire.

  2. Place the browned rolls in a frying pan with gravy, ketchup, browning sauce, and lemon pickle.

  3. Thicken the sauce with butter rolled in flour.

  4. Serve with optional forcemeat balls, mushrooms, or yolks of hard-boiled eggs.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Mace + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rump of beef
Forms the main body of each roll and gives the dish its meaty texture when cooked through.
Egg yolk
Binds the seasoning and crumbs to the meat so the filling stays together.
Marrow
Adds richness and fat that keeps the filling moist during cooking.
Bread crumbs
Soak up juices and fat from the filling, helping it hold its shape.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce when it is thickened with flour.
Flour
Thickens the gravy sauce as it cooks with the butter.

The step that matters

Browning the rolls over a fire. Browning the outside before simmering builds deep flavor through the Maillard reaction and firms the surface, helping the rolls keep their shape and filling in the sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, egg, pepper, parsley, lemon, ketchup, butter):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, egg, pepper, parsley, lemon, ketchup, butter. 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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