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Beef Olives

Beef Olives are thin beef slices rolled with sausage, simmered in stock with herbs and spices, finished with meat glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 386 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the olives

  1. Cut the beef into thin slices.

  2. Place a spoonful of sausage meat on each slice, roll up, and tie into shape.

Simmer

  1. In a saucepan, combine the stock, sliced shallot, bouquet of herbs, and spices.

  2. Add the beef rolls to the saucepan and simmer gently for two hours until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the string from the rolls and place them on a warm dish.

  2. Add the meat glaze to the stock, dissolve, season, and strain over the beef rolls.

  3. Garnish the dish with cooked spinach or cauliflower.

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. Shallot + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together386 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Meat + shallottop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Meat + allspicetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together566 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Topside or steak
Forms the wrapper; slow simmering turns the tough cut tender.
Diabetic sausage meat
Provides the savoury filling that flavours each roll from the inside.
Stock
Cooks the rolls gently and becomes the base of the sauce.
Meat glaze
Adds concentrated meaty flavour and body to the strained sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering gently for two hours. A gentle simmer lets collagen in the beef slowly break down into tenderness. A rolling boil toughens muscle fibres and can make the rolls fall apart, so keep the liquid barely moving.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, shallot):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, shallot. 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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