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Beef Olives

Beef olives are rolled slices of seasoned steak filled with a mixture of herbs, onions, mushrooms, and egg yolks, simmered in wine and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Trim and beat the steak, then cut it into thin slices.

  2. Chop the parsley, thyme, onions, eschalots, and mushrooms finely and mix together.

  3. Add the egg yolks to the mixture and combine well.

  4. Spread the forcemeat on the slices of meat, roll them up, and secure with string or small skewers.

Stew and serve

  1. Place the rolled olives in a stewpan.

  2. Add stock and white wine to the stewpan.

  3. Stew gently for 2 hours.

  4. Transfer the olives to a dish.

  5. Reduce the gravy, thicken it with butter rolled in flour, strain it, and pour it over the meat.

  6. Serve.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Rump steak
Forms the wrapper that holds the filling and becomes tender during slow stewing.
Egg yolks
Bind the chopped herbs, onions and mushrooms so the forcemeat holds together when rolled.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the stewing liquid and gravy.
Mushrooms
Add savoury, earthy flavour and moisture to the forcemeat filling.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth to the forcemeat filling.

The step that matters

Gentle stewing. Stewing gently keeps the liquid below a hard boil, so the connective tissue in the rump softens slowly without toughening or drying the meat, and the rolls stay intact.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, thyme, mushroom, pepper, egg, white wine, clove):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, thyme, mushroom, pepper, egg, white wine, clove. 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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