Skip to main content
Main

Garlic Gravy

A savory gravy made with beef, ham, carrot, garlic, stock, herbs, lemon, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Garlic Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Braise

  1. In a stewpan, brown the beef slices slightly on both sides.

  2. Add the ham, carrot, garlic, stock or water, savoury herbs, and lemon slices.

  3. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

Finish the gravy

  1. Mix the flour with a small quantity of water to form a smooth paste, then thicken the gravy.

  2. Strain the gravy through a coarse sieve.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and grated nutmeg to taste.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the main meat flavour and body to the gravy as it simmers.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth gravy as it cooks.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows and deepens during the long simmer.
Ham
Contributes salty, savoury depth to the stock.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour paste. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, so it must first be smoothed into a paste with cool water and then stirred in to thicken the gravy evenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ham, carrot, clove, garlic, flour, pepper):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, carrot, clove, garlic, flour, 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.

More garlic gravy recipes

Spanish 6 See all 2 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes