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To Make a Good Beef Gravy

A simple beef gravy made from drippings, water, flour, salt, and soy sauce or ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,078 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Make a Good Beef Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pour the drippings from the meat into a saucepan.

  2. Add 1 cup of boiling water.

  3. Sprinkle in 2 tablespoons of flour and ¼ teaspoon of salt.

  4. Stir continuously until it just comes to a boil.

  5. Add 1 tablespoon of soy sauce or tomato ketchup.

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 + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Meat + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,167 recipes
  3. Meat + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,529 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

Drippings from the meat
Carry the savory meat flavour and fat that give the gravy its richness.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells with heat, giving the gravy body.
Soy sauce or tomato ketchup
Adds depth and savoury sweetness to darken and season the gravy.

The step that matters

Stir continuously until it just comes to a boil. Flour can clump if it is not dispersed into the liquid while heating. Constant stirring keeps the starch evenly suspended, so it thickens smoothly as it heats 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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