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Gravy Thickening

A method for thickening gravy using butter, flour, and strained gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Gravy Thickening

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Simmer the gravy gently for 1.5 hours.

  2. Strain the gravy and let it cool, then remove the fat.

Make the roux

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour to the melted butter and stir until it turns light brown.

Thicken the gravy

  1. Let the mixture cool, then add it to the strained gravy.

  2. Boil the gravy quickly after adding the thickening.

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

Butter
Fat that carries the flour and adds richness and a rounded, savoury flavour.
Flour
Starch that thickens the gravy once cooked into the butter and heated with liquid.
Gravy
The liquid being thickened; its body increases as the roux's starch swells in it.

The step that matters

Boil the gravy quickly after adding the thickening. Flour starch only fully thickens when heated to near boiling, so the gravy must reach that temperature. Whisking the roux into the liquid helps prevent lumps as the starch swells and sets.

“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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