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Beef Olives

Beef Olives are rolled slices of rump steak seasoned, tied, browned, and stewed in stock until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the rump steak into thin slices or leave it as one large piece.

  2. Season the steak with chopped herbs, pepper, and salt.

  3. Roll up the pieces and tie them with narrow tape.

Stew

  1. In a clean stewpan, melt the butter and add the bacon and chopped parsley.

  2. Place the rolls of steak in the stewpan, pressing them closely together.

  3. Brown the rolls on all sides, then pour beef stock over them.

  4. Stew gently for 2 to 3 hours until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken the gravy with brown thickening or butter rolled in flour before serving.

  2. Add a little mushroom ketchup or Worcestershire sauce if desired.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (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 main meat that becomes tender during long, gentle stewing.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that seeps into the meat and stock as it cooks.
Butter
Carries fat for browning the rolls and adds rich flavour to the stewing liquid.
Beef stock
Provides the liquid that slowly braises the rolls and forms the base of the gravy.
Brown thickening
Thickens the stock into a gravy that clings to the meat.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 2 to 3 hours until tender. Rump steak is a tough cut with lots of connective tissue. Slow, gentle heat below a boil breaks that tissue down into gelatin, making the meat tender. Boiling hard toughens the muscle fibres and dries the rolls.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Garlicfits about as well

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