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Household Gravy, Superior

A savory veal and beef bone broth reduced into a light glaze, seasoned with onion, herbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Household Gravy, Superior

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the veal, trimmings, and bones in a stewpan.

  2. Add ½ cup of water and simmer gently until a light glaze forms at the bottom.

  3. Add 1½ cups of water, onion, parsley, thyme, carrot, bay leaf, salt, and pepper, and bring to a boil.

  4. Reduce heat and let simmer gently for 1 hour, partially covered.

Strain and finish

  1. Carefully remove the fat, strain the broth, and set aside for use.

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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 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

Lean veal
Provides meaty flavor and gelatin that gives the broth body.
Beef, veal, or mutton trimmings and bones
Release collagen and savory flavor into the liquid during long simmering.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth.
Carrot
Contributes mild sweetness and background flavor.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. A gentle simmer keeps the broth clear and prevents the fat and proteins from emulsifying into it. Boiling hard makes it cloudy and greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, beef, clove, parsley, thyme, carrot, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, beef, clove, parsley, thyme, carrot, 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.

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