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Plain Gravy for Roast Poultry and Game

A simple gravy made from fowl feet, neck, and optional vegetables, thickened with flour and flavored with herbs and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Plain Gravy for Roast Poultry and Game

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the feet and neck of the fowl.

  2. Scald the feet and neck and remove the skin and feathers from them.

  3. Place the feet and neck in a small saucepan with cold water, salt, peppercorns, shallot, mushrooms, toasted bread, and shin of beef.

Make the gravy

  1. Cook until the fowl is done.

  2. Remove fat from the dripping pan.

  3. Mix the fat with the strained gravy.

  4. Brown ham, turnip, carrot, and celery in the pan.

  5. Add savory, parsley, lemon peel, and allspice to the pan.

  6. If desired, thicken the gravy with flour.

Finish and serve

  1. Add port, claret, or sherry and a pinch of cayenne before serving.

  2. Serve a small amount in the dish.

  3. Serve the rest in a sauceboat.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  4. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Shallot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together202 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Shin of beef
Its collagen releases gelatin during long simmering, giving the gravy body and a rich mouthfeel.
Flour
Its starch swells in the hot liquid and thickens the gravy.
Toasted bread
Toasting adds browned, nutty flavour that gives the gravy depth.
Shallot
Its mild sweetness and aroma build the savoury base of the gravy.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy with flour. Flour clumps if it is added to hot liquid all at once. Mixing it first with a little cold liquid or fat, then stirring it in gradually and simmering, lets the starch swell evenly into a smooth, lightly thickened gravy.

Swap the turnip

The recipe marks turnip as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, mushroom, beef, ham, carrot, celery, parsley):

  1. Leekfits about as well
  2. Turnipthe original
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Parsnipfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, mushroom, beef, ham, carrot, celery, parsley. 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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