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Beef Olives

Beef olives are slices of steak rolled with marrow, parsley, and spices, simmered in gravy.

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 the slices with the egg yolk.

  3. Coat the slices thickly with bread crumbs.

  4. Mix the marrow or suet, parsley, lemon rind, mace, pepper, and salt together.

  5. Spread the mixture on the steak slices.

  6. Roll the slices up.

  7. Secure the rolls with a skewer.

Cook and serve

  1. Brown the rolls lightly in a Dutch oven.

  2. Combine the browned rolls with gravy, ketchup, browning sauce, and lemon pickle in a stewpan.

  3. Thicken the sauce with the butter rolled in flour.

  4. Serve the olives in the gravy.

  5. Garnish with force-meat 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 becomes tender during slow simmering in the gravy.
Egg yolks
Bind the bread crumb coating to the steak so it stays on during cooking.
Bread crumbs
Form a coating that helps the filling hold and adds a light, absorbent texture.
Marrow or suet
Adds richness and moisture to the filling, keeping the rolls juicy as they cook.
Butter
Rolled in flour and stirred into the sauce, it thickens the gravy and adds richness.

The step that matters

Securing the rolls with a skewer. If the rolls are not tightly secured, the filling can leak out during browning and simmering, so the olives lose their moisture and shape.

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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