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Beef Olives

Beef Olives are rolled slices of prime beef stuffed with a forcemeat of veal, ham, and seasonings, then breaded and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. Make a forcemeat by mixing veal, ham, soaked bread, truffles, mace, parsley, shallots, beef marrow, long pepper, salt, lemon peel, and mountain wine.

  2. Cut slices of prime beef, brush with beaten egg, and cover with the forcemeat.

Roll and coat

  1. Roll the beef slices up and secure with a skewer.

  2. Dip the rolls in egg yolk and coat with seasoned bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in boiling lard or butter until golden brown.

  2. Serve with a rich sauce or thick gravy.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Veal + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together815 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Ham + truffletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together516 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean veal
Forms the body of the forcemeat, giving it a firm, savory filling texture.
Lean ham
Adds salty, savory flavor to the forcemeat filling.
Slices of prime beef
Serves as the outer wrapper that encloses the filling and holds its shape.
1 slice of bread soaked in milk
Keeps the forcemeat moist and tender by holding moisture within the filling.
Beef marrow or veal fat
Adds richness and moisture to the forcemeat as it cooks.
Seasoned bread crumbs
Creates a crisp, golden browned crust when fried.

The step that matters

Frying in boiling lard or butter until golden brown. The fat must be hot enough to brown the crumb coating quickly. If the fat is too cool, the crust absorbs grease and turns soggy before the filling is cooked through.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, bread, milk, truffle, parsley, shallot):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, bread, milk, truffle, parsley, shallot. 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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