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Beef Olives

Beef strips rolled with seasoned trimmings, fried, then simmered in a sauce made from flour and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Trim edges and fat from the beef, then cut into strips 3 inches wide and 4 inches long.

  2. Season the beef strips with salt and pepper.

  3. Chop the trimmings and fat finely, then mix with cracker, sage, savory, pepper, and salt.

  4. Spread the mixture on the beef strips, roll them up, and tie with twine.

  5. Roll the beef olives in flour.

Brown and simmer

  1. Fry the pork in a pan until browned, then remove it.

  2. Fry the beef olives in the same pan until browned, then transfer to a small covered saucepan.

  3. In the remaining fat, stir in flour until smooth and brown.

  4. Gradually add boiling water, stirring for 2-3 minutes, then season with salt and pepper.

  5. Pour the sauce over the olives, cover, and simmer for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Remove the strings with a sharp knife and arrange the olives on a dish, pouring the gravy over them.

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 + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Sage + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 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

Beef
Forms the wrapped rolls and provides the main meaty texture and browned flavor.
Flour
Coats the olives and thickens the gravy as it browns in the fat.
Powdered cracker
Binds the chopped filling so it holds together inside the rolls.
Pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the filling and browned pan base.

The step that matters

Browning the olives before simmering. Searing the rolled beef in the fat builds browned flavor and a sealed surface. Simmering afterward then cooks the filling through gently, keeping the beef tender rather than tough.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, pork, 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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