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Gravy Espagnole, Made Without Meat

A savory brown gravy made with onions, butter, herbs, and beer, served without meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Gravy Espagnole, Made Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Fry the onions in butter until browned.

  2. Add the carrot, parsley, thyme, lemon rind, bay leaf, cloves, mushroom ketchup, anchovy essence, toasted bread, peppercorns, and salt.

  3. Pour in the water and beer.

  4. Simmer gently for 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the mixture and serve.

  2. Thicken with flour and butter if desired.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Browning in butter builds deep, savoury flavour that forms the gravy's base.
Butter
Carries the frying of the onions and adds richness to the finished gravy.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami depth in place of meat stock.
Anchovy essence
Adds a salty, savoury depth that rounds out the flavour without fish being noticeable.
Beer
Contributes malty, slightly bitter flavour and liquid to the simmered gravy.
Toasted bread
Its browned crust adds toasty colour and flavour, and it can help thicken the liquid.

The step that matters

Frying the onions until browned. Browning the onions slowly in butter develops rich, caramelised flavour through the Maillard reaction and sugar browning. Pale onions give a thin, flat-tasting gravy, so the colour needs to be deep before liquid is added.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, parsley, thyme, lemon, clove, mushroom):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, parsley, thyme, lemon, clove, mushroom. 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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