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Beef Olives

Beef olives are small pieces of round steak rolled with poultry dressing, fried, simmered, and served in a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,571 recipes. Both carry trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the round steak into small squares.

  2. Place 1 tablespoon of dressing in each square, roll them up, and tie with twine.

Cook and serve

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter and fry the beef olives until browned, turning frequently.

  2. Add hot water to the pan and let simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Thicken the gravy with flour, then stir in caramel and mushroom or Worcestershire sauce.

  4. Pour the gravy over the beef olives on a hot dish.

  5. If desired, chop pickled olives and add to the gravy.

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. Mushroom + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,571 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + olivetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Flour + mushroomtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Round steak
Forms the wrapped beef rolls and provides the meat that becomes tender during simmering.
Poultry dressing
Fills the rolls, adding savory flavour and moisture inside the beef.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy.
Butter
Fat for frying that promotes browning on the outside of the rolls.
Caramel
Adds sweetness and deepens the colour of the gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the beef olives before simmering. Frequent turning over fat lets the outside brown evenly, building flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale rolls added to simmering liquid taste flatter and look less appealing.

“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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