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Beef Olives

Beef olives are rolled roast beef slices coated in breadcrumbs, seasoned, stewed in beef gravy, and served with thickened sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the olives

  1. Cut slices of underdone roast beef about ½ inch thick.

  2. Sprinkle bread crumbs, minced shallot, fat, and seasoning over the beef.

  3. Roll the beef slices and fasten with a small skewer.

Stew and serve

  1. Prepare gravy from beef bones and add the rolled beef.

  2. Stew until tender, about 1 hour.

  3. Arrange the meat on a dish, thicken and flavor the gravy, and pour it over the meat before serving.

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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 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

Bread crumbs
Absorb meat juices and fat, helping the filling stay moist and hold together inside the roll.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the filling, keeping the lean beef moist as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the meat rather than running thin.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the gravy.
Shalot
Adds a mild sharp aroma that flavours the filling.

The step that matters

Stewing until tender. Underdone cold beef is already cooked only partly, so it needs gentle, sustained moist heat to become tender. Simmering slowly in gravy breaks down connective tissue without drying the meat, while a hard boil would toughen it.

“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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