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Beef Olives

Beef Olives are rolled beef steaks filled with a forcemeat of breadcrumbs, suet, parsley, lemon peel, spices, then stewed in gravy with wine and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rolls

  1. Prepare the forcemeat by mixing bread crumbs, minced beef suet, chopped parsley, grated lemon peel, nutmeg, pepper, and salt, then bind with beaten egg yolks.

  2. Spread a layer of forcemeat over each steak, roll them up, and tie with thread.

  3. Fry the rolls lightly in beef dripping.

Stew and serve

  1. Place the rolls in a stew pan with brown gravy, white wine, and cayenne.

  2. Thicken the sauce with flour and butter, cover, and let stew gently for 1 hour.

  3. Before serving, stir in mushroom catsup and garnish with cut pickles.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steaks
Form the outer wrapper that holds the forcemeat and becomes tender during slow stewing.
Bread crumbs
Bind and bulk the forcemeat, giving it a soft, moist texture.
Beef suet
Adds fat to the forcemeat, keeping it moist and rich as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Bind the forcemeat together so it holds its shape when rolled.
Flour
Thickens the gravy sauce so it coats the rolls.
Mushroom catsup
Adds savory, umami depth to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Gently stewing the rolls. Stewing at a low, steady heat lets the beef steak soften slowly without toughening or drying. A hard boil can make the meat tough and can break the sauce, so keep it at a gentle simmer for the full hour.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, parsley, lemon, pepper, egg, white wine):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, parsley, lemon, pepper, egg, white wine. 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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