Skip to main content
Main

Beef Olives

Beef olives are rolled steak stuffed with a breadcrumb and herb mixture, simmered in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Flatten the meat and cut it into rolls 4 inches long, 2 inches wide, and ½ inch thick.

  2. Chop the trimmings finely and add them to the forcemeat.

  3. Mix the breadcrumbs, suet, herbs, parsley, lemon rind or onion, mace, nutmeg, and egg to bind.

Roll and stew

  1. Place a piece of the mixture on each piece of steak, roll up, and tie securely.

  2. Brown the rolls in a little dripping, cover with stock, and stew gently for 1 hour.

  3. Season and thicken the gravy, then pour it around the beef olives.

Serve

  1. Serve with mashed potatoes as an entrée.

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

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Steak
Forms the outer wrap that holds the filling and becomes tender during stewing.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and give the forcemeat a soft, bound body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich as it cooks.
Egg
Binds the forcemeat so it holds together inside the rolls.
Stock
Provides the liquid that gently cooks the beef and forms the gravy.

The step that matters

Brown the rolls before stewing. Browning creates flavour through the Maillard reaction on the surface of the meat. Skipping it or rushing it leaves the gravy pale and flat-tasting.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, lemon, nutmeg, egg, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, lemon, nutmeg, egg, 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes