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Beef Olives

Beef Olives are beefsteak pieces rolled with bacon, seasoned, fried, and simmered in gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the olives

  1. Cut the beef into small pieces, about 2 to 3 inches wide and 3 to 4 inches deep.

  2. Place some bacon on each piece of steak, then season with pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  3. Roll up each piece and tie with string.

  4. Dust each roll with flour and fry until nicely browned.

Simmer and serve

  1. Place the rolls in a stew jar and cover with gravy.

  2. Simmer for 1.5 hours.

  3. Remove the string and serve very 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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beefsteak
Forms the main body of each roll and becomes tender during the long simmer.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that runs into the lean beef as it cooks.
Flour
Coats the rolls so they brown well when fried and helps thicken the surrounding gravy.
Gravy
Keeps the rolls moist during simmering and carries flavour into the beef.

The step that matters

Frying the floured rolls until nicely browned. Browning the floured surface builds rich, roasted flavour through the Maillard reaction. Searing also helps the rolls hold their shape before simmering.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, 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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