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Beep Olives

Rolled beef seasoned with herbs, wrapped in bacon, simmered in stock, served with a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Beep Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the steaks thin and beat them to make level.

  2. Cut into 6 or 7 pieces, brush with egg, and sprinkle with minced herbs.

  3. Season with pepper and salt, roll tightly, and fasten with a skewer.

Simmer and finish

  1. Place stock in a stewpan that fits the ingredients snugly.

  2. Lay the meat rolls in the stock, cover with bacon slices, and place a piece of paper on top.

  3. Simmer gently for 2 hours for best results.

  4. Remove the rolls, take out the skewers, and thicken the gravy with butter and flour.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sauce + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rump steak
Forms the main body of the olives and becomes tender during slow simmering.
Egg
Brushed on the beef to help the minced herbs adhere to the surface.
Bacon
Laid over the rolls in the stock, adding savory fat and flavor to the cooking liquid.
Flour
Combined with butter to thicken the stock into a gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. Vigorous boiling toughens muscle fibers and can break the rolls apart, so a gentle simmer keeps the beef tender and the rolls intact.

“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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