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Stock, Gravy

A stock made by browning roast meat bones with dripping, simmering in water or stock, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,777 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Stock, Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the bones from roast meat into small pieces.

  2. Fry the bones in a pan with a little dripping until browned.

  3. Pour off all the fat from the pan.

Make the stock

  1. Add enough water or stock to cover the bones.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Boil for 30 minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture and use as needed.

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. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 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

Bones from roast meat
Provide the flavour and gelatin that give the stock body and savoury depth.
Dripping
Carries heat for browning the bones and adds richness and roasted flavour.
Water or stock
Extracts flavour and collagen from the bones as it simmers.

The step that matters

Fry the bones until browned. Browning caramelises proteins and sugars on the bone surfaces through the Maillard reaction, creating deeper, roasted flavour in the finished stock. Pale bones yield a flatter-tasting stock.

“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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