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Ragcut SaucCy or Strojig Beef Gravy with Mushrooms

A savory beef gravy with mushrooms, bacon, onions, carrots, and aromatic spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ragcut SaucCy or Strojig Beef Gravy with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove gills from mushrooms and peel mushrooms.

  2. Season mushrooms with pepper and salt.

  3. Beat the beef steaks and season them with a little salt.

  4. Chop onions and carrots.

Make the gravy

  1. In a large stewpan, layer bacon, mushrooms, and beef steaks.

  2. Add cloves, mace, black peppercorns, allspice berries, grated nutmeg, thyme, marjoram, winter savory, and parsley.

  3. Cover the stewpan and cook over low heat, watching for gravy to form.

  4. Once gravy is plentiful, increase heat and boil until meat is nearly dry.

  5. Stir the mixture, ensuring vegetables and herbs brown without burning.

  6. Pour in boiling water and simmer gently for 1.5 hours.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Mushroom + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steaks
Provide the meat that cooks down into rich, savoury flavour and body.
Mushrooms
Release liquid and add earthy, savoury flavour to the gravy.
Bacon
Adds fat and smoky, savoury flavour to the pan base.
Onions
Add sweetness and depth as they brown in the pan.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Boil until the meat is nearly dry. Reducing the liquid after the gravy forms concentrates flavour, and the meat and vegetables must brown without burning, since scorched bits make the gravy bitter.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, beef, onion, carrot, clove, allspice, nutmeg):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, beef, onion, carrot, clove, allspice, nutmeg. 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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