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Made Gravies and Sauces

A rich gravy made from beef, veal, mutton, and bone trimmings simmered with aromatics.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,601 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Made Gravies and Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the trimmings and bones in a stewpan, layering with beef at the bottom, followed by mutton and bacon or ham.

  2. Add carrot slices, onion, mace, cloves, black and white pepper, sweet herbs, and small pieces of veal.

Make the gravy

  1. Cover the stewpan and set it over a slow fire for 6-7 minutes, shaking the pan often.

  2. Dredge in a little flour and pour in enough water to cover the ingredients slightly.

  3. Cover the stewpan and let it simmer for several hours until the gravy is rich.

Finish and serve

  1. Season with salt to taste, strain, and serve.

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. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Beef + muttontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 recipes

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

  5. Beef + vealtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Lightly thickens the cooking liquid so the gravy has body.
Bones (uncooked)
Release gelatin and flavour into the water during long simmering, enriching the gravy.
Trimmings of beef
Provide meaty flavour that deepens as the gravy simmers.
Slices of bacon or ham
Add savoury, smoky flavour and some fat to the stock.

The step that matters

Simmering the gravy for several hours. Long, gentle simmering slowly extracts gelatin and flavour from bones and meat. Boiling hard can cloud the liquid and toughen meat, so keep it at a bare simmer.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, mutton, meat, ham, carrot, onion):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Pepperfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, mutton, meat, ham, carrot, onion. 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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