Skip to main content
Main

Beef Olives

Beef olives are pieces of steak rolled with bacon and stuffing, stewed in gravy with carrots and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the olives

  1. Cut the steak into pieces ½ inch thick, 3 inches wide, and 4 inches long.

  2. Lay a thin slice of bacon on each piece.

  3. Place a little well-seasoned stuffing on each piece.

  4. Roll up each piece and tie with tape.

Make the sauce

  1. Peel and dice the carrots and onions.

  2. Fry the diced carrots and onions until golden brown.

  3. Mix the flour with slightly more than ½ pint of water.

  4. Add pepper and salt to the mixture.

  5. Add the fried vegetables to the mixture.

  6. Boil the mixture for 15 minutes.

Stew and serve

  1. Stew the olives gently in gravy.

  2. Add the olives and gravy to the mixture.

  3. Let everything simmer for 30 minutes.

  4. Serve in a dish that will hold the gravy.

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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Carrot + vealtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean steak
Forms the meat wrapped around the stuffing, giving the olives their main body and bite.
Bacon
Adds fat and salty flavour that bastes the beef as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a gravy-like sauce.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and aroma to the sauce once fried.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma to the sauce once fried until golden.

The step that matters

Simmer the olives gently. Gentle heat keeps the lean steak tender; a hard boil toughens the meat proteins and can break the rolls apart.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, veal, flour, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes