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Beef Olives

Beef olives are rolled slices of cold beef filled with ham, anchovies, sausage meat, herbs, carrot, onion, simmered in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,601 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the anchovies and ham finely and add them to the sausage meat or forcemeat.

  2. Spread the mixture over thin slices of cold beef, roll them up, and tie with string.

Simmer and finish

  1. Simmer the rolled beef with chopped vegetables in the stock for 1 hour.

  2. Remove the beef olives, strain the liquid, and thicken the gravy with butter and flour.

  3. Return the beef olives to the pot, bring to a boil, 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. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 recipes

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

  4. Beef + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  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

Sausage meat or forcemeat
Binds the filling and adds savoury richness inside each rolled slice of beef.
Butter
Enriches the gravy and gives it body when cooked with flour.
Flour
Thickens the strained stock into a smooth gravy.
Anchovies
Adds a deep savoury, salty flavour to the filling.
Cold beef slices
Wraps the filling and becomes tender as it simmers.

The step that matters

Simmering the rolled beef gently. A gentle simmer lets the thin beef slices become tender without toughening or falling apart, while the filling stays inside. A hard boil can toughen the meat and loosen the string and rolls.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ham, meat, onion, butter, flour):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, meat, onion, butter, flour. 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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