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Beef Olives

Beef olives are thin slices of beef rolled with breadcrumbs, suet, herbs, and egg, stewed in brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the olives

  1. Cut the meat into thin slices, about 4-5 inches long and 2 inches wide.

  2. Mix the suet, breadcrumbs, parsley, thyme, marjoram, salt, and pepper.

  3. Bind the mixture with the egg and spread a little on each slice of meat.

  4. Roll up the slices and tie them with string.

Stew and serve

  1. Bring the brown sauce to a boil in a saucepan and add the beef rolls.

  2. Stew gently for 1 hour, then remove the string and serve on mashed potatoes.

  3. Strain the sauce over the beef olives.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  5. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steak or fillet
Forms the wrapper and the main body of each olive, cooking tender during stewing.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture from the suet and egg, giving the filling a soft, cohesive texture.
Suet
Adds fat that melts during stewing, keeping the filling moist and rich.
Egg
Binds the filling so it holds together when rolled and tied.
Brown sauce or thickened gravy
Provides the cooking liquid that flavours and moistens the beef during stewing.

The step that matters

Rolling and tying the olives. If the rolls are loose or the filling is spread too thick, it can fall out or leak into the sauce during the long gentle stew. Rolling tightly and tying securely keeps each olive intact while the meat softens.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, parsley, thyme, marjoram, egg, pepper, lemon):

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, parsley, thyme, marjoram, egg, pepper, lemon. 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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