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BEEF OLIVES (Au Roi)
Take long, thin slices of beef, and lay over them equal quantities of mushroom, parsley, and chopped onion. The vegetables must be carefully prepared; a spoonful of each will be sufficient for six slices of meat. Mash two pounds of boiled potatoes. Mix a spoonful of flour to a quarter of a pint of cream, and the yolks of two eggs well beaten, with a little pepper and salt, and add it to the mash. Spread the mixture over the olives; roll them up, tie with a narrow tape, and fry, or put them into the oven for about half an hour. Serve with a good brown sauce, or they may have an edging of potatoes. Time, half an hour. Probable cost, without the meat, 1s.
A Victorian rolled-beef dish: thin slices spread with a potato-and-cream forcemeat, tied, and browned. The recipe assumes you know how to keep the rolls from bursting, which is where most attempts go wrong.
- The hinge: roll tight, tie tightThe potato filling swells slightly as it heats and will push the roll open if the tape is slack. Spread the mixture thinly, leaving a clear border at each end, roll firmly and tie in two places rather than one. Kitchen string replaces the narrow tape; remove it before serving.
- The meat"Long, thin slices of beef" suggests slices from a lean cut such as topside or round, flattened to about 1/8 inch. Pieces of roughly 5 by 3 inches suit the rolling. The recipe gives six slices and no stated number of servings.
- Quantities are out of balanceTwo pounds of mashed potato will fill several times six olives. Either scale the mash down to about half a pound, or plan on using the remainder as the "edging of potatoes" the recipe mentions.
- A quarter of a pint of creamIn an English book of this period the pint is 20 fl oz, so a quarter pint is 5 fl oz, or a little more than half a cup. "A spoonful" is unstandardised here; a tablespoon is the usual modern reading.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none. Around 375F for the stated half hour suits rolls this size; the beef is thin and needs only to be cooked through and browned, not braised long.
- FryingIf frying instead, brown the tied rolls in butter or dripping over medium heat, turning to colour all sides, then cover and finish on low heat for 15 to 20 minutes. Dry-frying for the full half hour will toughen slices this thin.
- Brown sauceThe book assumes a house espagnole or reduced meat gravy stands ready. Deglazing the pan with red wine and beef stock, then thickening lightly, gives the same effect without a day of stock-making.
- Probable costThe 1s. quoted is for everything but the beef, and reflects late-Victorian prices for potatoes, cream and eggs. Cassell's costings are a reminder that the book was written for households budgeting to the penny.
Beef olives contain no olives. The name is generally traced to the older English "alows" or "aloes" of beef, rolled and stuffed slices recorded in cookery manuscripts long before the eighteenth century; how the modern spelling arose is uncertain, and the often-repeated idea that the tied bundles resembled the fruit is tradition rather than established derivation. Versions of the same idea run through European cooking as the German Rinderrouladen and the Italian involtini. What marks this one out is the stuffing: instead of the usual breadcrumb forcemeat, the mash is bound with cream and egg yolk, which would stretch a small quantity of meat across more plates. The grand tag "Au Roi" carries no known royal connection; such French flourishes were common in nineteenth-century compilations.