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Strong Savoury Beef Gravy

A hearty beef gravy made with bacon, ham, herbs, and simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Strong Savoury Beef Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a 4-quart stewpan, lay the bacon slices at the bottom.

  2. Add the ham, beef, carrot, onion with cloves, celery, parsley, lemon-thyme, marjoram, savoury, sweet basil, bay leaf, lemon peel, and allspice.

Brown and simmer

  1. Pour in ½ pint of water, cover, and simmer gently on low heat for 30 minutes until almost dry.

  2. Carefully watch it to achieve a nice brown color, then turn the meat to brown the other side.

  3. Add 2 quarts of boiling water and boil gently for 1.5 hours to create a rich gravy.

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

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

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the meat flavour and body that the gravy is built from.
Bacon
Adds smoky, salty fat that flavours the stock and helps the pan brown.
Ham
Contributes savoury, salty flavour to the stock.
Onion
Adds sweetness and depth as it cooks down and browns.

The step that matters

Browning the meat until almost dry. Reducing the water and letting the bacon, meat and vegetables brown in the pan caramelises their sugars and proteins. Browning builds the colour and deep flavour of the gravy, but it can scorch if left unattended, so watch it closely and turn the meat as instructed.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, beef, carrot, onion, clove, celery, parsley):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Orangefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, beef, carrot, onion, clove, celery, parsley. 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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