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Beef Olives

Beef Olives are rolled pieces of beef seasoned with herbs, bacon, and stock, simmered and thickened into a savory gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the steaks thin.

  2. Beat the steaks to make them level.

  3. Cut the steaks into 6 or 7 pieces.

  4. Brush the pieces with egg.

  5. Sprinkle the pieces with finely minced herbs.

  6. Season the pieces with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  7. Roll up the pieces tightly.

  8. Fasten the rolls with small skewers.

Simmer

  1. Place the stock in a stewpan that fits the ingredients snugly to help them keep their shape.

  2. Lay the rolled meat in the stewpan.

  3. Cover with bacon slices.

  4. Place a piece of paper over the bacon.

  5. Simmer gently for 2 hours; the slower they cook, the better.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the rolls from the pan.

  2. Take out the skewers.

  3. Thicken the gravy with butter and flour.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sauce + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Rump steak
Forms the main body of the dish; slow simmering tenderizes its connective tissue.
Egg
Brushed on the beef to help the herbs and seasoning cling to the surface.
Bacon
Laid over the rolls during simmering, adding savory fat that flavors the stock and gravy.
Butter and flour
Combined to thicken the cooking liquid into a gravy.

The step that matters

Simmering gently. Rolled beef cooked too hard can toughen and fall apart, while low, slow heat lets connective tissue break down gradually so the meat turns tender and the rolls keep their shape.

“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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