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Beef Olives

Beef Olives are beef steaks rolled with forcemeat, bread crumbs, and seasonings, fried and served with a truffle, morel, and mushroom gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the olives

  1. Lay forcemeat on each beef steak and roll them up tightly.

  2. Tie the rolls with string to keep their shape.

  3. Mix bread crumbs, egg, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

  4. Fry the rolls until brown.

Make the gravy

  1. Prepare gravy with truffles, morels, and mushrooms.

  2. Boil the truffles, morels, and mushrooms together.

  3. Pour the gravy into a dish.

Serve

  1. Remove the string before serving.

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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

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

  2. Truffle + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rump of beef
Forms the outer wrap that holds the forcemeat and browns during frying.
Forcemeat
Provides a soft, savoury filling that stays moist inside the rolled steak.
Bread crumbs
Bind the filling and help it hold together as it cooks.
Egg
Binds the filling so it holds its shape when rolled and fried.
Truffles
Add a strong, earthy aroma to the gravy.
Morels
Add a deep, earthy flavour and meaty texture to the gravy.

The step that matters

Rolling and tying the olives tightly. Loose rolls can open during frying, letting filling escape and the beef cook unevenly. Tight rolling and tying keep the filling enclosed and the shape intact while the surface browns.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, bread, egg, pepper, truffle, mushroom. 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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