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Gravy That Will Keep a Week

A beef gravy made with lean beef, butter, herbs, and optional ham, simmered slowly and stored for up to a week.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,729 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Gravy That Will Keep a Week

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a stew-pan, place the sliced beef and add butter and your choice of herbs and roots.

  2. Cover the pan and set it over low heat.

Make the gravy

  1. Once the gravy is drawn, shake the pan back and forth for several minutes to dry it up.

  2. Add enough water to your desired consistency and let it simmer for 1.5 hours.

Store

  1. Store in a cool place.

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. Beef + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,729 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 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

Lean beef
Provides the meat flavour and the body of the gravy as it releases its juices.
Butter
Adds fat that carries aroma and gives the gravy a rounder, richer mouthfeel.
Herbs and roots
Build aromatic flavour as they release their oils and sugars during gentle heating.

The step that matters

Shaking the pan to dry it up. Shaking while the juices are drawn helps the liquid evaporate and concentrates flavour. Adding water too early would dilute the gravy before its taste has developed.

“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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