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Plain Gravy

A simple beef gravy made by simmering beef with water, bread crust, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Plain Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Notch and flour the gravy beef.

  2. In a pot, combine the beef and cold water.

Make the gravy

  1. Skim off any scum and let it stew gently until the juice is extracted, about 2 hours.

  2. Add the piece of bread half an hour before it's done.

  3. Strain the gravy to remove fat and return it to the saucepan.

  4. Thicken with butter rolled in flour.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

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

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Gravy beef
Provides the meat juices that form the flavour base of the gravy.
Flour
Coats the beef and thickens the gravy as it cooks and is added with butter.
Butter
Adds richness and body when rolled in flour and stirred into the gravy.
Crust of bread
Added near the end of stewing to help thicken and add body to the gravy.

The step that matters

Skim off any scum. Scum rising during stewing can cloud the gravy and carry impurities, so skimming early keeps the juice clear and clean-tasting.

“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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