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Beef Olives

Beef olives are rolled strips of thin steak filled with breadcrumbs, celery, and butter, then browned and simmered in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the olives

  1. Cut the steak into strips about 2 inches wide and 5 inches long.

  2. Mix the bread crumbs, coarse sea salt, pepper, chopped celery, and melted butter.

  3. Place a layer of the mixture in the center of each meat strip, roll them up, tie with twine, and dredge with flour.

Brown and braise

  1. Heat suet or bacon fat in a frying pan and brown the beef olives on all sides.

  2. Transfer the browned rolls to a stewing pan.

  3. In the remaining fat, mix 4 tablespoons of flour and add 1 pint of stock or boiling water.

  4. Bring to a boil, strain over the rolls, and add onion, bay leaf, and salt.

  5. Cover and cook gently for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Remove the strings, place the olives on a hot dish, and pour the sauce over them.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Thin round steak
Forms the wrapped outer layer and becomes tender during gentle simmering.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb the melted butter and fat to form a moist, savoury filling.
Melted butter
Adds richness and moisture to the bread crumb filling.
Flour
Dredging coats the rolls and thickens the stock into a sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the olives on all sides. Searing creates browned flavour through the Maillard reaction, and the rolls must be well coloured before braising, since the gentle simmer adds little colour or savour.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pepper, butter, flour, onion):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, butter, flour, onion. 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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