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Beef Olives

Beef olives are rolled beef squares filled with a seasoned mixture, 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 ↓

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 filling

  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 roll them up, sewing them closed.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the rolled beef 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. Once cooked, remove from the oven and add boiling water, butter, flour, and soy sauce to the gravy.

  4. Bring the gravy to a boil and pour it over the beef olives before serving.

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 holds the filling and becomes tender when cooked in stock.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and bind the filling so it stays moist and holds its shape.
Egg
Binds the filling ingredients together so they hold when rolled and cut.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that keeps the filling moist during baking.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the filling as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy and helps the surface brown.

The step that matters

Rolling and sewing the beef closed. If the rolls are not tightly sealed, the filling can leak into the stock while baking, leaving the olives dry and the gravy cloudy. Thin, even beef also cooks more evenly and stays tender.

Swap the onion

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

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

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