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Meat Gravy for Sauces

A savory gravy made with bacon, veal, minced ham, vegetables, herbs, and stock, thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Meat Gravy for Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a stewpan, combine the bacon, veal, and minced ham.

  2. Add the chopped onion, carrot, parsnip, celery, parsley, thyme, chives, cloves, nutmeg, and pepper.

  3. Cook over gentle heat until the meat releases its juices.

  4. Increase the heat until the juice thickens without burning.

Make the roux and simmer

  1. Remove the meat and add butter lumps equal to the pounds of meat used.

  2. Thicken the mixture with flour to form a roux.

  3. Return the meat to the stewpan, pour in stock broth, and simmer for two hours.

  4. Skim the liquid and strain it before serving.

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 + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

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

  4. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Parsnip + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together270 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

Bacon, veal, and minced ham
Release juices and fat that build the savoury flavour of the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and forms the roux with flour.
Flour
Thickens the gravy into a smooth, body-rich sauce when cooked into a roux.
Stock broth
Provides the liquid that the gravy simmers in and carries the flavour.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth as it softens in the meat juices.

The step that matters

Increase the heat until the juice thickens without burning. Meat juices reduce and concentrate as they heat, but the sugars and proteins scorch easily. Burnt residue gives a bitter taste and dark flecks, so the heat must rise gradually while the liquid is stirred.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, carrot, parsnip, celery, parsley, thyme):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, carrot, parsnip, celery, parsley, thyme. 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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