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Sauce

Gravy for Roast Meats

A simple gravy made from roast fat, flour, cold water, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Gravy for Roast Meats

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove the roast from the pan and pour off the fat, leaving 3 to 4 tablespoons in the pan.

  2. Stir in 1 heaping tablespoon of flour.

  3. Gradually add cold water while stirring constantly.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, and cook for a few minutes.

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. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fat from the roast
Carries flavor and forms the base that the flour cooks into a roux.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells when heated in the fat and liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the cold water gradually while stirring. Adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps the flour smoothly dispersed, so lumps do not form. Cold liquid added to a hot roux also gives you more time to whisk before it thickens.

“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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