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Beef Olives

Beef olives are strips of beef seasoned with breadcrumbs, suet, and spices, simmered in gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

Make the gravy

  1. Melt the clarified dripping and fry the sliced onion until golden brown.

  2. Add flour and stock, bring to a boil, then let cool.

Prepare the olives

  1. Mix the bread crumbs with suet, salt, pepper, and beaten egg in a bowl.

  2. Cut the meat into thin strips and place one spoonful of the seasoning on each piece.

  3. Tie the meat with thread and place it into the cooled gravy.

Cook

  1. Cook slowly for 1½ hours. If using cold meat, substitute butter for dripping.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  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

Steak
Forms the tender outer wrap that encloses the seasoning and cooks into soft slices.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the suet and egg into a stuffing that holds its shape.
Suet
Adds fat that melts during slow cooking, keeping the filling moist and rich.
Beaten egg
Binds the stuffing together so it stays in place inside the meat.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a gravy that coats the olives.
Sliced onion
Browns in the dripping to add sweetness and savory depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Tie the meat tightly before cooking. If the thread is loose, the filling can escape during slow simmering. Firm, even ties keep each olive closed so the stuffing stays inside while the meat becomes tender.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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