Beef Olives

History

The recipe is from The Virginia House-Wife, by Mary Randolph, 1824.

The dish contains no olives, and accounts of the name disagree. The most commonly repeated derivation takes "olives" as a corruption of "aloes" or "allowes," from the Old French alou, meaning lark, the small stuffed rolls being thought to resemble birds prepared with their heads removed. Wiktionary gives the same lark derivation but records a competing possibility — "or possibly from the shape." A third account holds that the oval rolls simply resembled olives, though this is reported as less supported among historians; the same source states plainly that there is no definite origin point for the first recipe, and that whether it was British, French, or otherwise is ambiguous. Supporting the bird reading, the French alternative name is alouettes sans tête, "larks without heads," and the English dish is still often called "veal birds."

An antecedent appears in 15th-century English manuscript cookery as "Alows de Beef," which opens: "Take fayre Bef of the quyschons, and motoun of the bottes, and kytte in the maner of Stekys." John Florio referred in 1598 to "That meate which we call oliues of veale." Veal was the earlier meat; beef became more common by the 18th century, with a version in Elizabeth Raffald's The Experienced English Housekeeper, 1769. The resemblance of technique across these is suggestive of continuity, but no source demonstrates a documented line of transmission to Randolph — treat the sequence as chronological, not causal.

Randolph's own text specifies slices "from a fat rump of beef six inches long and half an inch thick," beaten with a pestle, spread with forcemeat, rolled, skewered, browned before the fire, then stewed in gravy with red wine and mushroom catsup, and garnished with forcemeat balls.

On the book's making: Randolph's text draws on knowledge from the enslaved people who worked in her kitchens, as well as on recipes passed to her from her extended family. The sources say this of the cookbook as a whole; they say nothing about who prepared this particular dish.

Ingredients

• fat rump of beef
• bread crumbs
• fat bacon
• parsley
• onion
• suet
• mace
• pepper
• salt
• egg yolks
• 1 pint good gravy
• 1 gill red wine
• 2 spoonfuls mushroom catsup

Instructions

1. Beat the beef slices well with a pestle. Make a forcemeat by mixing together bread crumbs, chopped fat bacon, parsley, a little onion, shred suet, pounded mace, pepper, and salt. Bind the forcemeat with egg yolks. Spread a thin layer of this forcemeat over each slice of beef, then roll it up tightly and secure the rolls with skewers.
2. Set the rolls before the fire and turn them until they are a nice brown color.
3. Have ready a pint of good gravy thickened with brown flour and a spoonful of butter. Add to it a gill of red wine and two spoonfuls of mushroom catsup. Lay the browned rolls in this sauce and stew them until tender.
4. Garnish with forcemeat balls before serving.