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Veal Olives

Veal olives are veal slices rolled with bacon and forcemeat, simmered in brown sauce with olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,263 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Veal Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Lay a slice of bacon on each piece of veal.

  2. Spread a thin layer of forcemeat on top.

  3. Roll up tightly and secure with twine.

Make the sauce and cook

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and fry the olives until lightly browned.

  2. Pour off the butter, add the hot brown sauce, cover, and simmer gently for 1½ to 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Remove the strings, arrange the olives on a bed of mashed potatoes, and strain the sauce over them.

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. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + olivetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

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

  5. Sauce + olivetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,568 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Veal fillet
Forms the tender meat that wraps the filling and softens as it simmers.
Bacon
Adds fat and salty flavour that bastes the veal during long cooking.
Veal forcemeat
Adds a moist, savoury filling that flavours the inside of each roll.
Brown sauce
Provides the cooking liquid that braises the rolls and forms the finished sauce.
Butter
Carries heat for frying the olives and gives them a golden, browned surface.
Olives
Contribute a briny, savoury flavour that contrasts with the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. Boiling makes muscle proteins contract and toughen the veal, and it can break the sauce. A gentle simmer lets the connective tissue soften slowly so the meat stays tender and the sauce stays smooth.

“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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