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Prixciples Gravy

A savory gravy made with claret, arrowroot, mace, cinnamon, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 166 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Prixciples Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Gently boil the stock until it reduces to one-third of its original volume.

  2. Strain the stock carefully and mix it with the claret, warming it up.

Thicken the sauce

  1. In a cup, mix the arrowroot with cold water and stir until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the arrowroot mixture to the simmering sauce, stirring continuously.

  3. Cook until the sauce thickens to the consistency of thin treacle.

  4. Ensure the sauce remains bright and well-stirred.

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. Arrowroot + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together166 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Arrowroot + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together329 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Arrowroot
Thickens the sauce into a smooth, glossy texture when heated in liquid.
Claret
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the gravy.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the sauce.
Cinnamon
Adds a warm, sweet aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually add the arrowroot mixture to the simmering sauce, stirring continuously.. Arrowroot clumps if it meets hot liquid in one mass. Adding the smooth slurry slowly while stirring lets starch granules disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens without lumps.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (arrowroot, cinnamon, pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against arrowroot, cinnamon, 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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