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Beef Olives

Beef olives are rolled beef pieces stuffed with breadcrumbs and seasoning, browned and simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 olives

  1. Trim any fat from the beef and chop it finely.

  2. Mix the chopped beef with bread crumbs and seasoning.

  3. Cut the beef into pieces 3 inches wide and 4 inches long, then season them.

  4. Spread the stuffing on each piece, roll them up, and tie with string.

  5. Dust the rolled beef with flour.

Brown and simmer

  1. Render the fat from the pork in a pan, then remove the pork.

  2. Brown the beef olives in the same pan.

  3. Once browned, place the olives in a covered saucepan and pour in the boiling water.

  4. In the pan used for browning, mix 1 tablespoon of flour with a little water to thin it, then add to the saucepan.

  5. Simmer everything for 2 hours.

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

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

  3. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 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

Beef
Forms the main meat body that is rolled around the stuffing and becomes tender during long simmering.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and bind the chopped beef into a stuffing that holds its shape.
Fat pork
Renders fat for browning the olives, adding richness and flavor to the pan.
Flour
Coats the beef for browning and, mixed with water, thickens the cooking liquid into gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the olives. Browning in hot rendered fat builds flavor and a golden surface through the Maillard reaction. Crowding the pan or skipping this step leaves the olives pale and the gravy flat-tasting.

“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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