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Beef Olives

Beef olives are rolled slices of beef stuffed with bacon, suet, breadcrumbs, herbs, and egg, then stewed in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the meat into thin slices.

  2. Finely chop the suet.

  3. Combine the suet, bread crumbs, chopped bacon, salt, pepper, parsley, and a pinch of thyme in a bowl.

  4. Moisten the mixture with part of a beaten egg.

Roll and stew

  1. Place a tablespoonful of the mixture on each slice of meat, roll them up, and tie with fine string.

  2. In a saucepan, place the rolled beef olives and pour the stock over them. Stew gently for 2 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the string and serve on a border of mashed potatoes or spinach.

  2. Thicken the gravy with a little flour and butter mixed together, add a squeeze of lemon juice, and pour over the beef olives.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rump steak
Forms the thin outer wrapper that holds the filling and becomes tender during slow stewing.
Suet
Adds fat to the filling, keeping it moist and rich as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Soak up moisture and give the filling body so it holds together when rolled.
Bacon
Contributes savoury, salty fat that flavours the filling.
Egg
Binds the filling so it holds together when rolled and tied.
Stock
Provides liquid for slow stewing, softening the beef and forming the base of the gravy.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 2 hours. Rump steak is a tougher cut that needs long, low, moist cooking to break down its connective tissue. A hard boil would toughen the meat and can make the rolls fall apart.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Thymethe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, egg, bread, parsley. 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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