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Goose, Gravy for

A gravy made with goose drippings, gravy beef, onion, water, and flour, served with roast goose.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Goose, Gravy for

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Fry the sliced onion in butter or dripping until slightly browned.

  2. Add the gravy beef and pour in the water along with any bones or trimmings.

  3. Simmer gently for two hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Skim off the fat, season with salt and pepper, and mix in the goose gravy.

  2. Thicken with flour, strain the gravy, and serve some with the goose.

  3. Serve the rest in a tureen.

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. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Gravy beef
Simmers into the stock, adding meaty flavour and body to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the gravy coats the back of a spoon.
Butter or good dripping
Carries the onion's browning and adds rich, savoury fat flavour.
Gravy from the roasted goose
Adds roasted poultry flavour and the browned juices from the pan.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour. Flour must be stirred in so it dissolves without lumps; it thickens by starch swelling in hot liquid, so it should be added to simmering gravy and given time to cook out its raw taste.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, beef, pepper, flour. 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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