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Beef Olives

Beef Olives are thin steak slices rolled with sausage, fried, then simmered in a gravy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the olives

  1. Place a piece of sausage meat at one end of each steak slice.

  2. Roll up each slice tightly and secure with thread.

  3. Fry the rolls in hot butter until they begin to brown.

  4. Remove the string.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry onions in butter until golden.

  2. Add a little flour, sweet herbs, and mushroom trimmings.

  3. Season with pepper and salt.

  4. Moisten with gravy or stock.

  5. Bring the sauce to a boil.

  6. Strain it.

Finish

  1. Return the olives to simmer until cooked through.

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

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

  2. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Thin slices of steak
Wrap the filling and cook to become tender rolls with a meaty exterior.
Oxford or bologna sausage meat
Adds savoury, fatty filling that keeps the rolls moist as they cook.
Butter
Browns the outside of the rolls and softens the onions, adding richness.
Onions
Frying them until golden builds sweetness and savoury depth into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce slightly so it coats the olives.
Mushroom trimmings
Contribute earthy aroma and savoury flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Securing the rolls before frying. If the steak rolls are not tightly rolled and well secured, the filling can leak out during frying and simmering. Tight rolling keeps the sausage meat inside and helps the olives hold their shape while they cook.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, flour, mushroom, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, flour, mushroom, pepper. 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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