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Beef Olives

Beef olives are beef squares stuffed with a seasoned mixture, baked in stock, served with a soy sauce gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,075 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. 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 olives

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

  2. Mix the beef, salt pork, onion, bread crumbs, pepper, salt, cloves, marjoram, and egg together.

  3. Place the mixture onto the beef squares and fold them into the shape of olives, sewing them closed.

Bake and serve

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

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 20 minutes, basting with butter halfway through.

  3. To serve, add boiling water, butter, flour, and soy sauce to the gravy, bring to a boil, and pour 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. Clove + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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 filling and cooks into tender meat.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the stuffing so it holds its shape when rolled.
Egg
Binds the stuffing ingredients together so they hold during cooking.
Brown stock
Provides liquid for the gravy that cooks the olives and carries savory flavor.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a gravy that coats the olives.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and sweetness to the stuffing as it cooks.

The step that matters

Sewing the olives closed. If the beef is not sealed tightly around the filling, the stuffing can leak into the stock during baking. Firm, even rolling keeps the filling moist and the olives intact.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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