Name: Gravy for Roast or Baked Meat
Ingredients: drippings from cooked meat; ½ cup boiling water; ¼ teaspoon salt; 2 teaspoons flour (optional)

Why it works: Meat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 28% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,529 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Gravy for Roast or Baked Meat

Ingredients

drippings from cooked meat
½ cup boiling water
¼ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons flour (optional)

Directions

Pour off nearly all the fat from the drippings, being careful not to disturb the sediment.
Add ½ cup of boiling water and ¼ teaspoon of salt to the drippings.
If desired, add 2 teaspoons of flour to thicken the gravy.
Place the pan on the edge of the fire and stir the gravy well while boiling for 3 minutes.
Pour the gravy around the meat, not over it.

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.

Meat + flourtop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,529 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Drippings from cooked meat: Provide the base flavor and the browned residue that gives the gravy its color and savor.
Flour: Thickens the liquid as its starch swells when heated, giving the gravy body.

The step that matters

Stir the gravy well while boiling. Flour added to hot liquid can clump if not stirred. Constant stirring while it boils keeps the starch dispersed so the gravy thickens smoothly.

“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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Gravy for Roast or Baked Meat