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Beef Olives

Beef strips rolled around a filling, seasoned, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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

  1. Trim edges and fat from the beef.

  2. Cut the beef into strips 3 inches wide.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt and pepper.

  4. Roll the beef strips around a filling of your choice, securing with toothpicks.

Fry

  1. Heat butter or oil in a pan and fry the beef olives until browned and cooked through.

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).

  2. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the wrapper, and its thinness lets it roll tightly and cook quickly.
Butter or oil
Conducts heat in the pan and helps the beef brown evenly.

The step that matters

Fry until browned and cooked through. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction on a hot, dry surface, which adds flavour. Thin rolled beef cooks quickly, so the pan must be hot enough to brown the outside before the inside overcooks.

“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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