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Gravy Made Without Meat

A savory gravy made from onions, water, beer, spices, and savory condiments, without any meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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

Prepare

  1. Sauté the sliced onions in a little butter until brown.

Simmer

  1. Add the onions to a saucepan with water, beer, peppercorns, salt, lemon peel, cloves, mace, walnut pickle, mushroom ketchup, soy sauce, essence of anchovy, and sweet herbs.

  2. Simmer all together in a covered saucepan for 20 minutes.

Strain and skim

  1. Strain the mixture for use and let it cool.

  2. Once cool, remove the fat from the top.

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. Clove + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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 first to build deep, savoury flavour as the base of the gravy.
Walnut pickle
Adds a dark, tangy, savoury depth to the gravy.
Mushroom ketchup
Contributes concentrated savoury, umami flavour.
Soy sauce
Adds salty, savoury depth and helps colour the gravy.
Essence of anchovy
Provides concentrated savoury depth without fish flavour being prominent.
Beer
Adds malty, bitter notes and liquid to extract flavour during simmering.

The step that matters

Browning the onions. Onions must be cooked until well browned, because the Maillard reaction and caramelisation create the deep colour and savoury flavour the gravy depends on. Pale onions yield a thin, flat-tasting result.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, beer, lemon, clove, walnut, 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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