Skip to main content
Main

Beef Olives

Beef olives are rolled slices of roast beef coated in breadcrumbs and shallots, simmered in a beef gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,982 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut slices of underdone roast beef about ½ inch thick.

  2. Sprinkle bread crumbs, minced shallot, and seasoning over the beef.

  3. Roll the beef slices and fasten with a small skewer.

Stew and serve

  1. Prepare gravy from beef bones and add the rolled beef.

  2. Stew until tender, about 1.5 hours.

  3. Arrange the meat on a dish, thicken and flavor the gravy, and pour it over the meat before serving.

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. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  2. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through slow stewing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and juices, giving the filling a softer, less dense texture.
Shallot
Adds a mild, savory aroma to the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and helps form a smooth base for thickening the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the meat.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savory flavor to the gravy.

The step that matters

Stew until tender, about 1.5 hours. Beef cooked too briefly stays tough, because collagen needs sustained gentle heat over time to break down and soften the meat. The beef is already underdone, so holding it at a low simmer until tender matters for the texture of the finished olives.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Tomatofits less well
  4. Chivefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, pepper, butter, flour, mushroom, ketchup. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes