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Beef Olives

Beef olives are seasoned beef slices rolled, coated in crackers, fried, and stewed in a spiced gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Pound the beef slices and rub with salt, pepper, sweet herbs, cloves, and nutmeg.

  2. Roll the beef tightly and tie it.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each piece in the beaten egg, then coat with the pounded crackers.

  2. Fry in beef drippings or lard until lightly browned.

Stew and finish the gravy

  1. Stew gently in gravy made by boiling bones with an onion, salt, and pepper for at least an hour.

  2. Thicken the gravy with a little browned flour and skim off any fat.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through gentle stewing.
Egg
Acts as a binder so the cracker coating sticks to the beef.
Seasoned crackers
Form a crisp, browned crust when fried in fat.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it is cooked.
Onion
Adds savoury depth to the gravy made from boiled bones.

The step that matters

Frying until lightly browned. Browning the coated beef in hot fat builds flavour and a crisp crust through the Maillard reaction. Frying too long or too hot can burn the cracker coating before the inside is ready for the gentle stew that follows.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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