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Beep Olives

Beef Olives are beef squares stuffed with a seasoned dressing, baked and served with a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Beep Olives

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the olives

  1. Beat the beef slice with a rolling pin to ½ inch thick and cut into 4-inch squares.

  2. Prepare dressing by mixing beef, salt pork, onion, bread crumbs, pepper, salt, cloves, marjoram, and egg.

  3. Place dressing onto beef squares and fold them into olive shapes, sewing them closed.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the olives in a tin pan with brown stock and sprinkle with flour.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven, basting with butter halfway through, for about 20 minutes.

  3. Add boiling water, butter, and flour to the gravy.

  4. Boil the gravy.

  5. 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 its shape.
Egg
Binds the dressing ingredients together as it sets with heat.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory richness to the dressing as it cooks.
Onion
Contributes moisture and savory aroma to the dressing.
Brown stock
Provides liquid that cooks the olives and forms the base of the gravy.

The step that matters

Sewing the olives closed. If the rolled beef is not sealed tightly, the dressing can leak out during baking, and the olives may open and lose their filling into the stock.

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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