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Beef Olives

Beef Olives is a dish of thinly sliced beef rolled with herbs, onions, and spices, stewed 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 onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the olives

  1. Cut the steaks rather thin.

  2. Brush the steaks with egg and sprinkle with herbs, onions, salt, and pepper.

  3. Roll up the pieces of meat and skewer or tie them into shape.

Stew and serve

  1. Place them in a stewpan with enough gravy to cover and stew gently for 2 hours.

  2. Remove the meat and skewers.

  3. Thicken the gravy with flour and butter, let it boil, and pour over the meat.

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 + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Onion + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + meattop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

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

  4. Egg + meattop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,432 recipes

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

  5. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rump steak
Forms the wrapped outer layer and provides the main meaty texture when stewed.
Egg
Brushed on the steaks to help the herb and onion filling adhere to the meat.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and moisture to the filling as they soften during stewing.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the gravy so it coats the meat rather than staying thin.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 2 hours. A gentle simmer keeps the rump steak tender; a hard boil toughens muscle fibers and can dry the rolls out, so the gravy should barely bubble.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, meat. 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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