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Beef-olives Soup

A soup made from finely chopped cold beef, mashed potato, gravy, egg, flour, stock, and optional pickled olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,458 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Beef-olives Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef olives

  1. Chop the cold beef very fine.

  2. Mix with one-third as much cold mashed potato and wet with gravy.

  3. Season well and bind with a beaten egg.

  4. Stir in a greased saucepan until quite stiff, then let it cool.

  5. Form into small olive-shaped balls, dust with flour, and set aside.

Cook the soup

  1. Strain the liquid from your stock-pot and bring to a boil, adding hot water or seasoning as needed.

  2. Boil and skim for five minutes, then carefully drop in the beef-olives.

  3. Simmer for one minute; avoid fast boiling to prevent breaking.

  4. If desired, add a dozen pickled olives to the soup when adding the beef-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. Potato + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,458 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Beef + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,220 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Slices of cold beef
Provides the main meaty flavour and bulk of the beef olives.
Cold mashed potato
Adds moisture and body, helping the mixture hold together.
Beaten egg
Binds the mixture so the olive-shaped balls keep their form when cooked.
Flour
Dusted on the shaped balls to help keep their surface dry and separate.
Gravy
Moistens the beef mixture and adds savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer the beef olives gently. Fast boiling can agitate the soup violently enough to break the delicate beef olives apart. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer lets the binding egg set while the balls stay intact.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, egg, flour, olive):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, egg, flour, olive. 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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