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Beef Olives

Beef Olives are roast beef slices rolled with a force‑meat mixture, simmered in broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 filling

  1. Cut cold roast beef into slices.

  2. Crack bones.

  3. Stew bones in water for 1 hour with pepper and salt.

  4. Strain the broth.

  5. Mix grated bread, onion, parsley, lemon rind, salt, and pepper to make force-meat.

  6. Moisten beef slices with gravy.

  7. Cover slices with force-meat.

  8. Roll slices tightly.

  9. Skewer the rolls.

Cook and serve

  1. Place rolls in a stew-pan.

  2. Pour strained broth over the rolls.

  3. Cover the pan.

  4. Simmer for 1 hour.

  5. Carefully remove rolls from the pan.

  6. Take out skewers.

  7. Thicken gravy with blended flour.

  8. Pour thickened gravy over the olives.

  9. Serve.

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

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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

Cold roast beef
Forms the meat wrapped around the stuffing, giving the olives their main body and savoury flavour.
Grated bread
Absorbs liquid and binds with the onion and herbs to form a moist, cohesive force-meat.
Flour
Thickens the strained gravy as it is blended in, giving it body to coat the olives.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury depth to the force-meat filling.

The step that matters

Simmer for 1 hour. Simmering gently keeps the rolls tender and prevents the liquid from boiling hard, which would toughen the meat and break up the rolls. Tight rolling and skewers help them hold their shape during cooking.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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