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Beef Olives

Beef Olives are thin slices of seasoned steak rolled with forcemeat, fried, then stewed in brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steak

  1. Beat the steak with a rolling pin for a few minutes, then cut it into thin slices.

  2. Flatten each slice with a wet knife and spread a layer of forcemeat on each.

Make the forcemeat

  1. To make the forcemeat, mix breadcrumbs with parsley, onion, herbs, lemon peel, and bacon.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and nutmeg, then moisten with beaten egg to form a soft paste.

Roll, fry and stew

  1. Roll up the slices and secure them with kitchen twine.

  2. Dust the rolls with flour and fry them in clarified dripping until browned.

  3. Stew the rolls gently in flavored brown sauce thickened with equal parts flour and cornflour for 1.5 to 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean steak
Forms the outer wrapping and provides the meat that becomes tender during stewing.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the forcemeat so it holds together inside the rolls.
Beaten egg
Binds the forcemeat into a soft paste that holds its shape when rolled.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor to the forcemeat, keeping the filling moist.
Flour
Dries the rolls' surface so they brown well when fried.
Cornflour
Thickens the brown sauce so it clings to the rolls during stewing.

The step that matters

Frying the rolls until browned. Browning the floured surface builds rich flavor through the Maillard reaction. Rolls that are pale or undercooked on the outside lack this flavor and may fall apart during long stewing.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, lemon, pepper, nutmeg, egg, flour, sauce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, lemon, pepper, nutmeg, egg, flour, sauce. 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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