Name: Quite Common Brown Gravy
Ingredients: 1 sheep's melt; 1 to 1½ oz butter; 1 or 2 small branches parsley, gently browned; ½ to ¾ pint boiling water; salt, to taste; pepper, to taste; optional: minced onion, sprig of lemon thyme, root of celery, carrot, mushroom catsup, lean ham

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 ↓

Quite Common Brown Gravy

Ingredients

1 sheep's melt
1 to 1½ oz butter
1 or 2 small branches parsley, gently browned
½ to ¾ pint boiling water
salt, to taste
pepper, to taste
optional: minced onion, sprig of lemon thyme, root of celery, carrot, mushroom catsup, lean ham

Directions

Prepare

Cut the sheep's melt into slices half an inch thick and lightly flour them.
Fry the slices until pale brown.

Make the gravy

Melt butter in a thick saucepan and shake the slices over moderate heat until colored.
Gradually pour in ½ to ¾ pint of boiling water.
Add a light seasoning of salt and pepper, then stew the gravy gently for 1½ hours.

Finish

Strain and skim off the fat 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.

Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,973 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

Sheep's melt: Provides the meaty base and flavour that the gravy is built from.
Butter: Carries the flour-dusted slices and helps them brown in the pan.
Flour (in the method): Lightly coats the slices, helping them colour and thickening the liquid slightly.

The step that matters

Shaking the slices over moderate heat until colored. Browning the flour-coated slices builds deep, roasted flavour through the Maillard reaction. Heat that is too high can scorch the flour and leave a bitter taste, while pale slices give a weak gravy.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, pepper, lemon, thyme, celery, carrot):

Parsnipfits better
Leekfits better
Turnipfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, pepper, lemon, thyme, celery, carrot. 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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Quite Common Brown Gravy