Skip to main content
Main

Gravy Made Without Meat, for Fowls

A gravy made by simmering fowl parts, herbs, onion, toasted bread, and water, then strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,536 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Gravy Made Without Meat, for Fowls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the fowl parts thoroughly and cut them into small pieces.

  2. Put them into a saucepan with the herbs, onion, toasted bread, salt, pepper, and water.

Simmer and finish

  1. Simmer gently for an hour or more.

  2. Pour the fat from the pan under the fowl into the saucepan and stir well.

  3. Strain the gravy and serve hot, adding mushroom ketchup 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. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Liver + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,420 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Feet, necks, livers, and gizzards of fowls
Provide the meat and collagen-rich connective tissue that give the gravy body and savoury flavour as they simmer.
Toasted bread
Its toasted crust adds a roasted, deeper flavour and helps thicken the liquid.
Savoury herbs
Add aromatic flavour that infuses into the simmering water.
Small onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the stock as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Simmering gently for an hour or more. A gentle simmer extracts flavour and gelatin slowly, while a hard boil makes the liquid cloudy and greasy and can toughen the meat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, bread, pepper, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, bread, pepper, 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.

More fowl gravy recipes

Roast 13 See all 4 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipes