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Beef Olives

Beef strips rolled with a seasoned trimmings mixture, fried and simmered in a sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rolls

  1. Trim edges and fat from the beef.

  2. Cut the beef into strips 3 inches wide and 4 inches long.

  3. Season the beef strips with salt and pepper.

  4. Chop the trimmings and fat finely.

  5. Mix the chopped trimmings and fat with cracker, sage, savory, pepper, and salt.

  6. Spread the mixture on the beef strips.

  7. Roll the beef strips into rolls.

  8. Tie the rolls with twine.

  9. Roll the beef rolls in flour.

Brown and braise

  1. Fry the pork until brown.

  2. Remove the pork from the pan.

  3. Fry the beef rolls in the same pan until brown.

  4. Place the browned beef rolls in a covered saucepan.

  5. Stir in flour until smooth and brown.

  6. Gradually add boiling water.

  7. Stir the mixture for 2-3 minutes.

  8. Season with salt and pepper.

  9. Pour the sauce over the beef rolls.

  10. Cover the saucepan.

  11. Simmer for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Remove the strings with a sharp knife.

  2. Serve the beef rolls on a dish, pouring gravy over them.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Sage + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the wrapper that encloses the stuffing and becomes tender during long simmering.
Powdered cracker
Absorbs juices and binds the chopped filling so it holds together inside the roll.
Pork
Adds fat and browned flavour to the filling and the pan drippings for the gravy.
Flour
Coats the rolls for browning and thickens the cooking liquid into gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the rolls before simmering. Searing the flour-dusted rolls in the pan builds browned flavour through the Maillard reaction, which the gravy then carries. Skipping or rushing it leaves the sauce pale and flat.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, pork, flour. 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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