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Beef Olives

Beef olives are beef rolls stuffed with suet, breadcrumbs, herbs, and egg, simmered in gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 beef

  1. Cut the beef into slices about ½ inch thick and 4 inches long.

  2. Beat the slices flat with a chopper dipped in water.

  3. Chop the trimmings from the meat and mix with the chopped suet, bread crumbs, and seasonings.

  4. Moisten with the egg and form into cork‑shaped pieces.

  5. Roll up each piece of beef, placing a piece of stuffing in the center.

  6. Tie each round with fine string.

Simmer and make the sauce

  1. Heat the gravy or water, add the beef olives, and let them simmer for 1 hour.

  2. Remove the olives, take off the string, and arrange them on a hot dish.

  3. Mix the flour with the sauce and a little water, add it to the gravy in the saucepan, and stir until it thickens.

  4. Boil for 3 more minutes.

  5. Add more salt and pepper if necessary, and strain the sauce over the 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steak
Forms the rolled outer wrapper that cooks tender during the long simmer.
Suet
Adds fat to the stuffing, keeping it moist and rich as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorbs juices and binds the stuffing so it holds its shape.
Egg
Binds the stuffing together so it can be formed into pieces.
Flour
Thickens the cooking gravy into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour and sauce mixture. Flour must be mixed smoothly with liquid before adding it to the hot gravy, otherwise it forms lumps. Boiling briefly afterward fully cooks the flour so the sauce thickens without a raw starchy taste.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, pepper, nutmeg, egg, sauce, 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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