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Brown Gravy Sauce

A sauce made by browning onions, toasting bread, simmering with meat or bone, herbs, and water, then straining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Brown Gravy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Fry the sliced onions in butter until browned.

  2. Toast the bread slowly until hard and deep brown.

Make the gravy

  1. Combine the onions, toasted bread, meat or bone, herbs, and water in a pot.

  2. Stew until thickened like gravy.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, strain, and cool until ready to use.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Bread + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Browning in butter builds deep, savory flavour and colour for the gravy.
Butter
Carries the onions' heat and helps them brown evenly, adding richness.
Bread
Toasted until deep brown, it adds colour and a toasty, roasted flavour to the gravy.
Water
Forms the liquid that extracts flavour from the other ingredients as it stews.

The step that matters

Toasting the bread slowly. Slow toasting browns the bread evenly through without burning it. Scorched bread gives a bitter taste that carries into the gravy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, bread, meat, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, meat, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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