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Olive Pie, Beef
Make a good forcemeat of equal parts of suet and finely-grated bread-crumbs, with plenty of finely-minced parsley, a little pepper, salt, and grated nutmeg, and the well-beaten yolk of an egg. Cut thin slices four inches long and two wide from the inside of a fillet of beef. Spread a layer of the forcemeat upon each slice, and roll it up securely. Place the rolls side by side in a deep pie-dish, and pile them high in the centre. Pour half a pint of gravy over them, line the edges of the dish with good crust, place a cover of the same on the top, and bake in a moderate oven. If it is wished the forcemeat can be omitted, and a small piece of fat put inside the rolls instead; the meat will then require seasoning with pepper and salt. A table-spoonful of ketchup and a table-spoonful of wine will improve the gravy. Time, about an hour and a quarter to bake the pie. Probable cost, 3s. 6d. Sufficient for six persons.
A Victorian pie of beef olives — small stuffed rolls — under a pastry lid. Most of the work is in the rolling; the baking is unattended.
- "Olive" means the roll, not the fruitThere are no olives in this dish. A beef olive is a thin slice of beef spread with forcemeat and rolled up; the name is usually explained by the shape and size of the finished roll, though that derivation is traditional rather than settled. Nothing needs adding.
- Moderate ovenRead this as 350F (180C), with the pie on a middle shelf. If the crust is browning faster than the meat is cooking, lay a sheet of foil loosely over the top for the last half hour.
- Half a pint of gravyAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1 1/4 US cups. Use a well-flavoured beef stock, lightly thickened; it should come partway up the rolls rather than submerge them, since a full dish will boil up under the lid.
- SuetShredded beef suet, fresh or the packaged shredded kind, gives the forcemeat its texture; it melts and bastes the beef from inside. Butter can stand in but the stuffing will be denser and greasier.
- KetchupIn a Victorian English kitchen this means mushroom or walnut ketchup — thin, dark, salty and nothing like tomato ketchup. Mushroom ketchup is still sold; a little Worcestershire sauce reads closer than the modern tomato bottle.
- Cutting the beefFillet is generous. Slices four inches by two need to be about 1/8 inch thick and are easier to cut if the meat has been in the freezer for twenty minutes; flatten them lightly between sheets of film before spreading. Topside or a thin-cut braising steak works and suits the long bake better.
- Securing the rollsThe recipe says only "roll it up securely." Use a cocktail stick or a turn of kitchen string, and remove it before serving. Rolls that unwind leave the forcemeat loose in the gravy.
- Crust"Good crust" here is shortcrust or a rough puff, rolled about 1/4 inch thick, with a strip pressed round the wetted rim of the dish before the lid goes on. Cut a vent so steam escapes rather than lifting the pastry off.
- Yield and costSix servings, as stated. The 3s 6d is a period price note, useful as a reminder that a fillet-of-beef pie was a comfortable middle-class dish rather than an everyday one.
Beef olives belong to a long European family of stuffed, rolled meats — the Italian involtini, the German Rouladen, the French paupiette — and the English name is generally traced to the shape and size of the finished rolls rather than to the fruit; earlier cookbooks sometimes call them "veal olives". Cassell's places the recipe among its pies, which is the more distinctly British move: the olives are usually braised in a pan on the stove, and laying them in a lined pie-dish with half a pint of gravy and a cover on top turns a made dish into something that could go whole to the table. The forcemeat of suet, breadcrumbs, parsley and nutmeg is the standard Victorian stuffing, deployed with equal confidence in veal, fish and poultry, and the note that it may be replaced with "a small piece of fat" shows the book's habitual practicality, with the reminder that the beef must then be seasoned itself.