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White Gravy Sauce

A clear beef or veal gravy made with water, bread crust, lemon peel, and thickened with a thickening agent.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

White Gravy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Notch and flour the meat.

Make the broth

  1. In a pot, combine the meat and water.

  2. Stew gently for 1 hour to extract flavor.

  3. Add the bread crust and lemon peel 15 minutes before done.

  4. Optionally, add an onion or sweet herbs.

Finish the gravy

  1. Strain the mixture carefully and skim off the fat.

  2. Stir in the thickening, season with pepper and salt, and add lemon juice.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef or veal
Provides the meat flavor that gives the broth its body and savoury taste.
Thickening (no. 2)
Starch that swells in the hot liquid to thicken the gravy to a smooth consistency.
Bread crust
Adds body and helps lightly thicken and mellow the broth as it simmers.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the meat.

The step that matters

Stir in the thickening. Starch must be stirred in while the liquid is hot and well mixed so it swells evenly; added in lumps or to a cold liquid, it leaves clumps that cannot be smoothed out.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, lemon, pepper):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, lemon, pepper. 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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