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Beef Olives

Beef Olives are rolled strips of beef stuffed with breadcrumbs, suet, parsley, and egg, then browned and stewed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. In a bowl, mix the bread crumbs, suet, pepper, salt, parsley, and beaten egg.

Roll and tie

  1. Cut the beef into strips, place a small amount of stuffing on each, and roll them up.

  2. Tie each roll with a piece of cotton thread.

Brown and stew

  1. Heat some suet in a saucepan until hot, then brown the rolls.

  2. Add a little water and stew for 2 hours.

  3. Thicken the gravy with a little flour and serve hot.

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

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steak
Forms the wrapping around the stuffing and becomes tender during the long stew.
Bread crumbs
Bulk in the stuffing that absorbs moisture and keeps it from being dense.
Suet
Fat that adds richness to the stuffing and helps brown the rolls in the pan.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together inside the rolls.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy.

The step that matters

Stewing the rolls gently in liquid. Beef steak is tough connective-rich meat, and a long, gentle simmer in liquid breaks down collagen into gelatin so the meat becomes tender. Too much heat or too short a time leaves it chewy.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, egg, pepper):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, 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.

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