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Beep Olives

A stew of thinly sliced rump steak rolled with bacon, seasoned, and simmered in stock with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Beep Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rolls

  1. Cut the rump steak into 6 or 7 thin pieces.

  2. Brush each piece with egg and sprinkle with minced savory herbs.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, and place a thin slice of bacon on each piece.

  4. Roll up the pieces tightly and fasten with a small skewer.

Stew and serve

  1. Place the stock in a stewpan and add the meat rolls.

  2. Stew gently for 2 hours or more.

  3. Remove the skewers, thicken the gravy with butter and flour, and flavor with sauce.

  4. Bring to a boil, pour over the meat, and 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. 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, becoming tender through long, gentle stewing.
Egg
Brushed on the steak to help the herbs and seasonings adhere to the meat.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that bastes the beef as it stews.
Butter and flour
Combine into a roux that thickens the stewing liquid into a gravy.
Stock
Provides the cooking liquid that tenderizes the beef and becomes the base of the gravy.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 2 hours or more. Rump steak is a tough, lean cut that needs long, low-temperature simmering to break down its connective tissue. A rolling boil would toughen the meat and make it stringy, so the liquid should only barely simmer.

“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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