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Beef Olives

Beef olives are meat rolls seasoned with herbs, suet, bread crumbs, and cooked in brown sauce or stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Slice the beef into pieces about ½ inch thick and 4 inches long.

  2. Beat the sliced beef with a wet rolling pin.

  3. Chop the trimmings finely and place in a bowl.

Make the filling

  1. Chop the beef suet finely after removing the skin.

  2. Rub the bread through a sieve to obtain 3 ounces of bread crumbs.

  3. Chop the parsley, thyme, and marjoram finely.

  4. Combine the suet, bread crumbs, parsley, thyme, and marjoram with the chopped beef in the bowl.

  5. Grate the lemon rind into the mixture.

  6. Add nutmeg to taste.

  7. Season with salt and pepper as desired.

  8. Add the egg and mix well.

Shape and cook

  1. Shape the mixture into rolls.

  2. Cook the rolls in brown sauce or stock for about one hour.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  5. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 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 or rump steak
Forms the main body of the olives and provides the meaty flavor and chew.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and tender during long cooking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and bind the filling so it holds its shape.
Egg
Binds the chopped ingredients together into a cohesive mixture.

The step that matters

Cook the rolls in brown sauce or stock for about one hour. Simmering gently keeps the meat tender; boiling hard can toughen the proteins and dry the filling out, so the liquid should stay at a low simmer.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, parsley, thyme, marjoram, lemon, pepper. 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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