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French Gravy

A thickened beef gravy made by simmering beef in water and thickening with flour and burned sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

French Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Season the beef properly and place it in three vessels.

  2. Add 1½ gallons of water to each vessel.

  3. Cover the vessels tightly.

Cook

  1. Preheat the Aladdin Oven.

  2. Place the vessels inside the oven at 400°F (200°C).

  3. Cook for several hours until the meat is perfectly cooked.

  4. Remove the meat.

Make the gravy

  1. Add 5 gallons of water to the liquid in the vessels.

  2. Stir in a little flour.

  3. Stir in a dust of burned sugar to thicken the gravy.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Beef + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Beef and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,677 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main meat flavor and, as it cooks, the savory body of the gravy.
Flour
Starch thickens the hot liquid as it heats, giving the gravy body.
Burned sugar
Adds a caramel-like color and a slightly bitter, toasted aroma to the gravy.

The step that matters

Cover the vessels tightly. A tight cover stops steam from escaping during the long cook, so the liquid does not evaporate too much and the flavor stays concentrated in the gravy.

“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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