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Beef Olives

A dish of thinly sliced beef rolled with a seasoned mixture, fried, and served with a sauce made from browned pork fat and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the olives

  1. Trim edges and fat from the beef, then cut into strips 3 inches wide and 4 inches long.

  2. Season the beef strips with salt and pepper.

  3. Chop the trimmings and fat finely, then mix with cracker, sage, savory, pepper, and salt.

  4. Spread the mixture on the beef strips, roll them up, and tie with twine.

  5. Roll the beef rolls in flour.

Brown and braise

  1. Fry the browned pork in a pan, then remove it and fry the olives until brown.

  2. Transfer the olives to a small covered saucepan.

  3. In the remaining fat, stir 1 tablespoon of flour until smooth and brown.

  4. Gradually add 1½ pints of boiling water, stirring for 2-3 minutes, and season with salt and pepper.

  5. Pour the sauce over the olives, cover, and simmer for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Remove the strings from the beef rolls, place them on a dish, and pour the gravy over them.

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 + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Sage + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the wrapped rolls and provides the meat that becomes tender during long simmering.
Powdered cracker
Absorbs juices and binds the chopped filling so it holds together inside the rolls.
Flour
Browns in the fat and thickens the boiling water into a smooth gravy.
Pork
Adds fat and browned flavor to the pan that carries into the gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the olives before simmering. Searing the rolled beef builds browned flavor and a seal on the surface. Skipping it leaves the olives pale and the gravy flat. Brown them evenly on all sides before adding the sauce.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, pork, 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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