Skip to main content
Main

A Good Beef Gravy

A beef gravy made by simmering beef with onion, water, seasonings, and thickened with arrowroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

A Good Beef Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Cut the beef into small pieces.

  2. Put the beef and cold water into a stewpan.

  3. Add the onion and seasonings.

  4. Simmer gently for three hours.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix the arrowroot with a little cold water.

  2. Pour the arrowroot mixture into the gravy while stirring.

  3. Add the Harvey’s sauce and allow it to just come to a boil.

  4. Strain the gravy 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.

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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

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

  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. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + arrowroottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 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

Lean beef
Provides the meat flavour and body that the simmered liquid takes on.
Arrowroot
Thickens the gravy into a smooth, glossy sauce when stirred into the hot liquid.
Mushroom ketchup or harvey’s sauce
Adds savoury, umami depth and a dark colour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Pour the arrowroot mixture into the gravy while stirring. Starch must be stirred in evenly, or it clumps into lumps instead of thickening the liquid smoothly. Arrowroot is best kept below a hard boil, since prolonged boiling can thin its thickening power.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, pepper, mushroom):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, pepper, mushroom. 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.

More beef gravy recipes

Soup 28Rich 9Roast 5Clear 4Sauce 3 See all 96 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes