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Gravy Made Without Meat

A savory gravy made from onions, butter, water, beer, and seasonings, without any meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Gravy Made Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the sliced onions in butter until brown.

  2. Add the fried onions to water and beer in a saucepan.

  3. Stir in peppercorns, salt, lemon peel, cloves, mace or pepper, pickle, mushroom ketchup, soy sauce, essence of anchovy, sweet herbs, and toasted bread.

  4. Simmer everything in a covered saucepan for 20 minutes.

  5. Strain the mixture and let it cool, then remove the fat.

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Beer + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together128 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Browned in butter to build a deep, sweet, savoury base for the gravy.
Butter
Browns the onions and adds richness and fat to the finished gravy.
Beer
Adds liquid and a malty, slightly bitter depth as it simmers.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami depth to the gravy.
Soy sauce
Adds salty, savoury depth that rounds out the flavour.
Essence of anchovy
Adds concentrated savoury depth that makes the gravy taste richer.

The step that matters

Frying the onions until brown. Browning develops deep flavour through the Maillard reaction and caramelisation. Onions fried only until pale will give a flat, sweet-tasting gravy instead of a rich, savoury one.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, beer, lemon, clove, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, beer, lemon, clove, mushroom, ketchup. 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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