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Beef Olives

Beef olives are rolled rump steak pieces coated with egg and herbs, wrapped in bacon, stewed, and served with a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the rump steaks thin and beat the slices level.

  2. Cut the steaks into 6 or 7 pieces.

  3. Brush each piece with egg, then sprinkle each with finely minced herbs.

  4. Season each piece with pepper and salt.

  5. Roll up the pieces tightly and fasten each roll with a small skewer.

Stew and finish

  1. Place the stock in a stewpan that fits the ingredients snugly.

  2. Lay the meat rolls in the stewpan and cover the rolls with bacon slices.

  3. Cover the stewpan with a piece of paper and stew gently for 2 hours.

  4. Remove the rolls from the stewpan and take out the skewers.

  5. Thicken the gravy with butter and flour.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sauce + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Rump steak
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through long, gentle stewing.
Egg
Brushed on the slices to help the herbs and seasoning adhere before rolling.
Bacon
Covers the rolls while stewing, adding savory fat that flavors the stock and gravy.
Butter and flour
Combine into a roux that thickens the gravy into a smooth, cohesive sauce.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 2 hours. Gentle, low heat lets the tough connective tissue in rump steak break down into gelatin, making the rolls tender. Boiling hard would toughen the meat fibers and can leave it dry and chewy.

“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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