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Beef Olives

Beef olives are beef slices rolled into olive shapes, coated with breadcrumbs and spices, browned, simmered in gravy with ketchup, browning sauce, and lemon pickle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the olives

  1. Cut the steak into slices about ½ inch thick and 6‑7 inches long.

  2. Rub each slice with egg yolk and coat with bread crumbs.

  3. Sprinkle with chopped marrow or suet, minced parsley, grated lemon rind, mace, pepper, and salt; mix well.

  4. Roll each slice into an olive shape and secure with a small skewer.

Cook and serve

  1. Brown the olives lightly in a Dutch oven over a fire.

  2. Transfer to a stewpan with gravy, ketchup, browning sauce, and lemon pickle.

  3. Thicken the sauce with butter rolled in flour.

  4. Serve the olives in the gravy.

  5. Garnish with forcemeat balls.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rump steak
Forms the wrapped outer layer that holds the filling and becomes tender when simmered in gravy.
Egg yolks
Bind the bread crumbs to the steak so the coating stays in place during cooking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and fat from the filling, adding body and a soft texture inside the roll.
Marrow or suet
Adds richness and moisture to the filling as it melts during cooking.
Brown gravy
Provides the cooking liquid that moistens the olives and forms the sauce.
Butter rolled in flour
Thickens the sauce so it coats the olives instead of running thin.

The step that matters

Rolling and securing the olives. If the rolls are loose or the skewer is poorly placed, the filling can leak out during browning and simmering. Rolling snugly and securing well keeps the filling inside and the shape intact.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

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