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Sauce

Nut Gravy

A simple sauce made by boiling water, mixing nut butter and flour, then seasoning with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Nut Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the water in a pot until boiling.

  2. In a bowl, mix a little boiling water with the nut butter until smooth.

  3. Add the nut butter mixture to the boiling water.

  4. Stir in the browned flour mixed with a little cold water.

  5. Season with salt and let boil for a few minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Nut butter
Provides richness and a nutty flavor that defines the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch gelatinizes when boiled.

The step that matters

Stir in the browned flour mixed with a little cold water. Flour mixed with cold water disperses without clumping; stirring it into boiling liquid lets the starch thicken evenly. Adding it dry or to hot liquid all at once can form lumps.

“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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