Why it works: Egg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Beef Olives
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the filling
Flatten the steak.
Cut the flattened steak into strips about 3 inches wide.
Mince the bacon.
Mix the minced bacon with the breadcrumbs, salt, and pepper.
Beat the egg.
Stir half of the beaten egg into the bacon-breadcrumb mixture.
Spread some seasoning on each strip of beef.
Roll and tie
Roll the seasoned strips up.
Tie each rolled strip with a piece of fine string.
Dip the rolled strips into the remaining egg.
Cook the olives
Pack the dipped strips tightly in a stewpan.
Add the stock or water to the stewpan.
Cover the pan.
Let the olives simmer for about 1 hour.
Remove the cooked olives from the pan.
Make the gravy and serve
Mix the flour with a little cold water or stock.
Stir the flour mixture with a ½ teaspoon of browning into the gravy.
Let the gravy boil for 2-3 minutes.
Add the Worcestershire sauce to the gravy.
Remove the string from the olives.
Arrange the olives on a dish.
Pour the gravy around the olives.
Serve with mashed potatoes.
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.
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sauce + flourtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,078 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
-
Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together50,459 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Pepper + saucetop 27% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together15,303 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together50,580 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
- Steak
- Wraps around the filling and becomes tender after long, gentle simmering.
- Bacon
- Adds fat and savoury flavour to the filling as it cooks.
- Breadcrumbs
- Absorb the egg and bacon fat, giving the filling a moist, cohesive texture.
- Egg
- Binds the filling together and forms a coating that holds the rolls together.
- Flour
- Thickens the stock into a gravy as its starch swells when heated.
- Worcestershire sauce
- Adds savoury, slightly tangy depth to the gravy.
The step that matters
Mix the flour with cold liquid before adding it to the gravy. Flour starch clumps when it meets hot liquid directly. Dispersing it in cold stock or water first lets the granules separate, so the gravy thickens smoothly.
“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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