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Gravy for Veal

A rich veal bone gravy made with herbs, lemon rind, mace, and peppercorns, thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Gravy for Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Break the veal bone into several pieces and place in a stewpan with cold water, parsley, thyme, lemon rind, mace, and peppercorns.

  2. Cover and simmer gently for 1.5 hours, or until the liquid reduces to 1 pint.

  3. Strain the liquid into a bowl.

  4. Let the strained liquid cool. (This can be made a day in advance.)

Make the gravy

  1. Melt butter in a small stewpan.

  2. Whisk in flour and stock until it boils.

  3. Pour off the fat from the pan used to bake the veal, keeping the brown sediment.

  4. Add the sauce to the pan, scraping the brown bits from the bottom.

  5. Return the sauce to the stewpan.

  6. Season with salt.

  7. Add sugar browning if desired.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the gravy over the meat 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Veal bone
Releases gelatin and savory meat flavor into the water, giving the stock body.
Butter
Provides fat that carries flavor and helps the flour blend into a smooth base.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells when heated in the liquid.
Stock
Supplies the main savory liquid that becomes the body of the gravy.

The step that matters

Whisk in flour and stock until it boils. Whisking keeps the flour dispersed so it does not form lumps, and bringing the mixture to a boil lets the starch swell and thicken the gravy fully.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, parsley, thyme, lemon, butter, flour, sugar):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, parsley, thyme, lemon, butter, flour, sugar. 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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