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Beef Olives

Beef olives are thin slices of beef rolled with suet, breadcrumbs, herbs, and egg, simmered in brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the olives

  1. Cut the meat into thin slices, four to five inches long and about two inches wide.

  2. Mix the suet, breadcrumbs, parsley, thyme, marjoram, salt, and pepper, then bind the mixture together with the egg and spread a little on each slice of meat.

  3. Roll up the slices and tie them with string.

Cook and serve

  1. Put the brown sauce in a saucepan and bring it to a boil.

  2. Add the rolls of beef to the boiling sauce and stew gently for one hour.

  3. Remove the string from the beef olives and serve on mashed potatoes, straining the sauce over and around.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  5. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steak or fillet
Forms the main body of each roll and becomes tender after gentle stewing.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb juices from the suet and herb mixture, keeping the filling moist and binding it.
Suet
Adds fat that melts during stewing, keeping the filling and meat moist and flavourful.
Egg
Binds the breadcrumb and suet filling so it holds together on the slices.
Brown sauce or thickened gravy
Provides the stewing liquid that cooks the rolls and carries savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Stewing gently after the sauce boils. Adding the rolls to boiling sauce and then stewing gently keeps the sauce at a low simmer. Gentle heat tenderises the meat without toughening it or breaking the rolls apart.

“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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