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Gravy Without Meat

A savory gravy made with onion, butter, flour, beer, water, peppercorns, lemon peel, cloves, and catsup, optionally finished with anchovy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,150 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Gravy Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt butter in a pan and fry sliced onion until golden.

  2. Add flour and stir to combine.

  3. Pour in beer and water, then add peppercorns, salt, lemon peel, cloves, and catsup.

  4. Simmer for about 30 minutes, then strain the mixture.

  5. If desired, add an anchovy for extra flavor.

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. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Beer + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Flour and butter 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

Onion
Frying until golden builds sweetness and savory browned flavor into the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as it cooks, giving the gravy body.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavor and adds richness to the gravy.
Beer
Adds malty, slightly bitter depth to the liquid base.
Catsup
Adds sweetness and acidity that rounds out the gravy's savory flavor.

The step that matters

Frying the onion until golden. Onion that is pale or burnt will taste flat or bitter. Slow, even browning develops sweet, savory flavor that carries through the whole gravy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, flour, butter, beer, clove, anchovy):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, flour, butter, beer, clove, anchovy. 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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