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Onion Gravy with Sage

A savory gravy made from onions, sage, butter, and veal gravy, reduced and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and sage are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,628 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Onion Gravy with Sage

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine the chopped onions and sage leaves with the butter.

  2. Cover the saucepan and simmer slowly until the onions are nearly cooked but not browned.

  3. Add the veal gravy and reduce it to one-third.

  4. Skim off the grease and strain the gravy through a towel.

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. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sage + vealtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together670 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sage + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,312 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Onion + vealtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 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
Soften and build a sweet, savory base as they cook slowly in butter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and carries the flavor of the onions and sage.
Sage leaves
Contributes the herbal aroma that defines the gravy.
Veal gravy
Supplies the liquid and body that the reduction concentrates.

The step that matters

Simmer the onions slowly without browning. Gentle, covered heat softens the onions and draws out their sweetness. Browning would add bitter, caramelized notes that change the gravy's clean flavor.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sage, butter, veal):

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sage, butter, veal. 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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