Skip to main content
Main

Buown Gravy Without Meat

A brown gravy made from onions, carrot, butter, water, herbs, and beer, served without meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Buown Gravy Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the onions and flour them.

  2. Fry the floured onions in butter until light brown.

  3. Slice the carrot and flour it.

  4. Fry the floured carrot in butter until light brown.

Make the gravy

  1. Add the boiling water.

  2. Add the remaining ingredients.

  3. Let the mixture stew gently for about 1 hour.

  4. Strain the gravy.

  5. Skim off all the fat when cold.

  6. Thicken it as desired.

  7. Add a few drops of coloring if necessary.

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 + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + beertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together680 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Break down during frying and stewing to give the gravy its savoury body and deep flavour.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body as it softens during the long stew.
Butter
Carries the frying of the vegetables, adding richness and helping them brown.
Savoury herbs
Add aromatic, earthy flavour that deepens the gravy as it stews.
Good beer
Adds malty depth and a little acidity to the stewed gravy.

The step that matters

Fry the floured onions and carrot until light brown. Flour coats the vegetables and browns in the butter, building colour and toasty flavour. Frying too hard or too long can scorch the flour and leave a bitter taste that carries into the gravy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, butter, beer, 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes