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Beef Olives

Beef olives are beef slices rolled with breadcrumbs, parsley, onion, and seasonings, stewed in gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle the beef slices with bread crumbs, parsley, onion, fat, pepper, and salt.

  2. Roll each slice up and secure with twine or a small skewer.

Cook and serve

  1. Prepare some gravy and add the beef olives.

  2. Stew until tender.

  3. Thicken the gravy with flour and season to taste.

  4. Serve the olives on a dish and pour the gravy over them.

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

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

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Slices of underdone beef
Provide the meat that is rolled around the filling and becomes tender when stewed.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and fat from the filling, keeping the stuffing moist and soft.
Onion
Adds savoury flavour and moisture to the filling as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the beef olives.

The step that matters

Stew until tender. Beef is tough collagen-rich muscle that needs long, gentle, moist heat to break down; cooking too hard or too briefly leaves it chewy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, pepper, parsley, flour):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, pepper, parsley, flour. 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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