Name: Beef Olives
Ingredients: handsome steaks; white pepper; coarse sea salt; forcemeat (made with veal fat and lean, a small bit of lean ham or bacon, parsley, sweet herbs, and bread crumbs); 1 egg; bread crumbs for coating; oil for frying; brown sauce; ⅓ cup white wine

Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Flatten the steaks with a rolling pin.
Dredge with white pepper and coarse sea salt.
Prepare forcemeat by mixing veal, ham or bacon, parsley, herbs, and bread crumbs, then beat with an egg.
Spread a little forcemeat over each steak and roll tightly, fastening with a skewer.
Dip each roll in egg yolk, then coat with bread crumbs.
Fry in oil until pale brown.
Serve with brown sauce mixed with white wine.

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.

Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Bread + white winetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together827 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,056 recipes

Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).
White pepper + white winetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together407 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl butyrate (fruity, apple).
Sauce + white winetop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together819 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, egg, bread, sauce, white wine):

Capersfits better
Tarragonfits better
Parsleyfits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, egg, bread, sauce, white wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.