Skip to main content
Sauce

While Gravy Sauce

A veal-based gravy made with knuckle, carrots, onions, herbs, and optional mushrooms, thickened with roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

While Gravy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Cut the meat into pieces and place in a stew-pan with any meat or poultry trimmings.

  2. Moisten with broth or water and add carrots, onions, parsley, thyme, and mushrooms if using.

  3. Heat the meat through without burning, pricking it to let the juices flow.

  4. Once the knuckle is cooked, remove it and let the stew-pan sit by the fire for a few minutes.

Finish the sauce

  1. Skim the fat off the sauce, strain it, and boil until it reduces to your desired quantity.

  2. Thicken with white roux or sweet thick cream, boil again, and skim if necessary.

  3. Stir continuously, lifting the sauce with a spoon to make it smooth.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Knuckle of veal
Releases gelatin and meaty flavour into the liquid as it cooks, giving the sauce body.
Gravy beef
Adds meaty depth and savoury flavour to the stock.
Carrots
Contribute gentle sweetness and aromatic depth to the sauce base.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma as they soften and release their flavour into the stock.
White roux (in the method)
Thickens the sauce, giving it a smooth, cohesive texture.

The step that matters

Skimming and stirring the sauce. Fat rising to the surface can make the sauce greasy, and rapid boiling or uneven heat can cause sticking or lumps. Skimming removes fat and stirring keeps the thickened sauce smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, beef, carrot, parsley, thyme, mushroom):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, beef, carrot, parsley, thyme, mushroom. 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

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes