Skip to main content
Main

Beef Olives

Beef rolled in forcemeat, stewed in gravy with wine and spices, served with pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 22 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the beef into long thin steaks.

  2. Prepare a forcemeat with bread crumbs, minced beef suet, chopped parsley, grated lemon peel, nutmeg, pepper, and salt; bind with beaten egg yolks.

  3. Spread a layer of forcemeat over each steak, roll them up, and tie with thread.

Cook

  1. Fry the rolls lightly in beef dripping.

  2. Place them in a stew-pan with brown gravy, white wine, and cayenne; thicken with flour and butter.

  3. Cover and let them stew gently for an hour.

  4. Before serving, add mushroom ketchup and garnish with cut pickles.

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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. White wine + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

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

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the wrapped rolls and becomes tender through slow stewing.
Egg yolks
Bind the forcemeat so it holds together inside the rolls.
Flour
Thickens the stewing liquid into a smooth, clinging gravy.
Butter
Enriches the thickened gravy with fat and a rounded flavour.
Minced beef suet
Adds fat and moisture to the forcemeat so it stays juicy.
White wine
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Stewing the rolls gently. Rolls cooked at a hard boil can toughen and the thin gravy may break or scorch. A gentle simmer lets the beef soften slowly while the flour-thickened sauce stays smooth and the forcemeat stays set.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, white wine, flour, butter, onion, mushroom, bread):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, white wine, flour, butter, onion, mushroom, bread. 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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes