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Brown Gravy

A savory gravy made with stock, butter, flour, vegetables, peppercorns, salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Brown Gravy

Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Brown Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. In a saucepan, heat the butter until hot.

  2. Add the sliced vegetables and peppercorns, frying until they are browned.

  3. Stir in the flour and brown it as well.

  4. Pour in the stock and stir until it boils.

  5. Cover and let it simmer slowly for one hour.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain through a sieve and return to the saucepan.

  2. Season with salt and lemon juice, then bring to a boil before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Carries the heat and browns the vegetables, adding richness to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a gravy as it cooks and browns.
Onion
Browns during frying, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the gravy.
Carrot
Browns and releases natural sweetness that rounds out the gravy.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavour as it fries and simmers into the stock.

The step that matters

Browning the vegetables and flour. Browning builds deep flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale vegetables or flour give a flat, washed-out gravy, so fry until golden brown before adding the stock.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, celery, carrot, onion, turnip):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, celery, carrot, onion, turnip. 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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