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Beef Olives

Beef olives are thin slices of roast beef stuffed with breadcrumbs, herbs, pepper, and salt, rolled, tied, simmered in gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the olives

  1. Cut the slices of meat very thin.

  2. Spread a stuffing made from breadcrumbs, sweet herbs, pepper, and salt on each slice.

  3. Roll up the slices tightly and tie with string.

Simmer and serve

  1. In a saucepan, prepare some good brown gravy.

  2. Add the beef olives to the gravy and let them simmer for about 30 minutes.

  3. Carefully remove the string to maintain the shape.

  4. Pour the gravy over the beef olives and serve hot.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Slices of undercooked roast beef
Forms the wrapper that is rolled around the stuffing and holds it together.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the herbs into a soft, cohesive stuffing.
Sweet herbs
Add aroma and flavour to the stuffing inside the beef.
Gravy
Keeps the rolls moist and adds savoury flavour as they simmer.

The step that matters

Roll up the slices tightly and tie with string. Loose rolls can open during simmering, letting the stuffing escape into the gravy and the olives lose their shape. Tight rolling and secure tying keep the filling enclosed while the beef cooks.

“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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