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To Thicken Gravies

A simple batter of flour, water, salt, and pepper used to thicken gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Thicken Gravies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, cold water, salt, and pepper to form a batter.

Thicken the gravy

  1. Remove the meat and vegetables from the pan to keep warm.

  2. Place the pan on the heat and stir the batter into the gravy.

  3. Boil for 10 minutes and serve.

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. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Its starch swells and thickens the gravy when heated in liquid.
Cold water
Mixes with the flour into a smooth batter that can be stirred into the gravy without lumps.

The step that matters

Stir the batter into the gravy. Flour starch thickens only when heated in liquid. Stirring the batter in well keeps the flour evenly dispersed, so it thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

“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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