Skip to main content
Sauce

Mock Gravy Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, onion, herbs, spices, beer, wine, and mushroom ketchup, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Mock Gravy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced onion and a little flour, stirring until the mixture is lightly browned.

  3. Gradually stir in the water, small beer (or ale), sweet herbs, lemon peel, cloves, mace, allspice, black pepper, mushroom catsup, and port wine.

  4. Let the mixture stew for 30 minutes, then strain it well.

  5. Once cooled, remove the fat from the surface.

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. Lemon + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

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

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Beer + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together45 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides fat for browning the onion and flour, adding richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as it cooks and helps the onion brown.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and depth as it browns in the butter.
Mushroom catsup
Adds concentrated savory, umami flavour to the sauce.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and fruity depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Lightly brown the onion and flour. Browning the flour in butter develops nutty, roasted flavour and colour. Stop at light browning, since over-browned flour turns bitter and loses thickening power.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beer, lemon, clove, mace, allspice, mushroom, port wine):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beer, lemon, clove, mace, allspice, mushroom, port wine. 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.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesHot Lemon Cream SauceHot Lemon Cream Sauce11 recipesWine Sauce for Sweet PuddingsWine Sauce for Sweet Puddings6 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipes