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Beef Olives

Beef olives are small beef patties shaped like olives, baked with a savory dressing and served with a buttery gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the beef

  1. Beat the beef slice with a rolling pin until it is ½ inch thick.

  2. Cut the beef into 4-inch squares.

  3. Mix the salt pork, onion, bread crumbs, pepper, salt, cloves, marjoram, and egg to make the dressing.

  4. Place the dressing on the beef squares.

  5. Fold the beef squares into the shape of olives.

  6. Sew the olives closed.

Bake

  1. Place the olives in a tin pan.

  2. Add water and butter to the pan.

  3. Sprinkle flour over the olives.

  4. Bake the olives in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 20 minutes.

  5. Baste the olives with butter halfway through baking.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Add ½ cup boiling water to the gravy.

  2. Add a small piece of butter to the gravy.

  3. Add a little flour to the gravy.

  4. Add catsup to the gravy.

  5. Bring the gravy to a boil.

  6. Pour the gravy over the olives.

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. Clove + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Round beef
Forms the wrapper that encloses the dressing and cooks into tender layers.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the dressing so it holds together inside the beef.
Egg
Binds the dressing ingredients together so they set when baked.
Salt pork
Adds fat to the dressing, keeping it moist and flavorful during baking.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory flavor to the dressing.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices into a gravy and helps the olives brown.

The step that matters

Sew the olives closed. If the seams open, the dressing can leak into the pan and dry out or escape during baking, so the rolls must be closed firmly before cooking.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, bread, pepper, clove, marjoram, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, bread, pepper, clove, marjoram, egg. 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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