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Beef Olives

Beef olives are small beef rolls stuffed with fat, bread crumbs, and seasonings, browned and simmered in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Mix parsley, bread crumbs, egg yolk, and seasoning in a bowl.

  2. Cut the fat from the steak into small pieces and mix with the force-meat.

Roll and brown

  1. Cut the steak into squares about 2 inches wide and ½ inch thick.

  2. Place a small amount of the force-meat in each square and roll them up, tying with string.

  3. Dip each roll in flour, then season with salt and pepper.

  4. Brown the rolls quickly in butter.

Braise

  1. Place the browned rolls in a stewpan, add stock and sauces, skim when boiling.

  2. Cook slowly for 1.5 hours.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 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

Steak
Forms the outer wrapper and provides the meaty flavour of the dish.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the filling a soft, binding body.
Egg yolk
Binds the filling together and adds richness.
Flour
Dusting on the rolls helps them brown and thickens the cooking liquid.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the stock and sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the rolls quickly in butter. Searing the outside creates browned flavour through the Maillard reaction and seals the surface. Browning too slowly or too long can dry the thin steak before the slow braise begins.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, mushroom, ketchup, sauce, egg, flour, pepper):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, mushroom, ketchup, sauce, egg, flour, 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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