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A Good Store Gravy

A gravy made by simmering ham with aromatics, then reduced to a jelly for use in ragouts or hashes.

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. Boil the ham in water to cover it.

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

  3. Keep the pot covered and let it simmer for three hours.

  4. Strain the liquor and keep it for later use.

Reduce and set

  1. When ready, boil the liquor with poultry or meat until reduced to 3 pints.

  2. Let it cool; it will turn into a jelly suitable for ragouts or hashes.

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. Garlic + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Onion + shallottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Gives the liquid its savoury, meaty flavour and salt as it simmers.
Onions
Add sweetness and depth of flavour to the stock as they cook down.
Shallots
Contribute a mild, aromatic sweetness to the stock.
Garlic
Adds a pungent aroma that mellows during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Reducing the liquor to 3 pints. Boiling concentrates the dissolved gelatin and flavour from the ham and bones; too little reduction leaves the stock thin and unable to set into a jelly on cooling.

Swap the clove

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

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

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