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Beef Olives

Beef olives are beef steaks rolled with bacon, egg yolk, forcemeat, and bread crumbs, then fried and stewed with gravy, wine, and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef olives

  1. Cut the beef into steaks half an inch thick and about ten inches long.

  2. Cut the bacon to match the width of the beef and about three parts as long.

  3. Spread part of the egg yolk on the beef, place the bacon on top, and add more egg yolk on the bacon.

  4. Spread some forcemeat on top, add more egg yolk, roll them up, and tie with string in two places.

  5. Coat the rolled beef with bread crumbs and egg yolk.

  6. Fry the coated beef in a large pan with beef dripping until browned, then drain.

Make the sauce and stew

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan, stir in flour until smooth, then add beef gravy and white wine.

  2. Add the beef olives to the sauce and stew for an hour.

  3. In the last 10 minutes, add mushrooms, truffles, morels, forcemeat balls, sweetbreads, and ox-palates.

Finish and serve

  1. Squeeze in lemon juice, season with pepper and salt, toss, skim off fat, and serve garnished with lemon and beet-root.

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 + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. White wine + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Rump of beef
Forms the main meat wrapper that becomes tender during the long stew.
Fat bacon
Adds fat that bastes the beef from inside and gives savory flavor.
Egg yolk
Acts as a binder that helps the coatings and forcemeat stick to the beef.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating when fried.
Flour
Thickens the butter and gravy into a smooth sauce.
Beef gravy
Provides the liquid base and rich beefy flavor of the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the coated beef before stewing. Frying the coated rolls until browned builds deep roasted flavor and a firm crust that holds the coating in place during the long stew.

“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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