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A Good Store Gravy

A gravy made by simmering ham with aromatics, then reducing the stock to a jelly-like consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

A Good Store Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Place the ham in a pot and cover it with water.

  2. Add onions, garlic, eschalots, bay leaf, sweet herbs, cloves, and peppercorns.

  3. Cover the pot and simmer for 3 hours.

  4. Strain the liquid and save it for later use.

Make the gravy

  1. When ready to use, combine the strained liquid with boiled poultry or meat.

  2. Boil down the mixture until reduced to 3 pints.

  3. Let it cool; it will set into a jelly.

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 + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Ham + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Ham + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,666 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Gives the stock its savoury, meaty flavour and body.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic flavour to the stock as they cook.
Eschalots
Add a mild, sweet onion flavour to the stock.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that deepens the stock's savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Boil down the mixture until reduced to 3 pints. Reducing concentrates the liquid's flavour and gelatin, so the gravy tastes richer and sets firmly when cooled. Reducing too little leaves it thin and weak in flavour.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, onion, garlic):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, onion, garlic. 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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