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Beef Olives

Beef rolled with bacon and veal stuffing, simmered with cloves and olives in a roux-thickened sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,866 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rolls

  1. Place a thin slice of bacon and a little veal stuffing on each piece of steak and roll them up.

  2. Skewer the rolls.

  3. Brown the rolls in hot fat.

Stew

  1. Transfer the rolls to a stewpan.

  2. Cover the rolls with stock or water.

  3. Add the cloves.

  4. Simmer for 30 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Remove the rolls from the skewers.

  2. Place the rolls on a hot dish.

  3. Season the sauce.

  4. Remove the cloves from the sauce.

  5. Thicken the sauce with roux or browned flour.

  6. If using olives, cut them in half.

  7. Remove the stones from the olives.

  8. Stew the olives in the sauce.

  9. Pour the sauce and olives over the beef.

  10. Serve hot.

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 + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Clove + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + olivetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,871 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Veal + olivetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together612 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Veal + clovetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Steak
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender when simmered slowly in liquid.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that moistens the rolls as they cook.
Veal stuffing
Fills the rolls, adding flavour and moisture inside the meat.
Roux or browned flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, glossy sauce.
Olives
Add briny, slightly tangy flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the rolls in hot fat. Searing the outside creates browned flavour through the Maillard reaction. Skipping or rushing this step leaves the sauce and meat tasting flat.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, flour, olive):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, flour, olive. 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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