Skip to main content
Main

Brown Gravy

A savory gravy made with onion, brown haricot stock, butter, flour, and browning sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Brown Gravy

Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Brown Gravy

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the sliced onion and cook until softened.

  3. Pour in the brown haricot stock and add salt and browning sauce.

  4. Strain the mixture, then stir in the flour to thicken.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sauce + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter 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
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the gravy.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, building a savoury base.
Brown haricot stock
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens.
Flour
Starch that thickens the liquid into a smooth, body-rich gravy.
Browning sauce
Darkens the colour of the gravy.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour. Flour thickens only when its starch is evenly dispersed in the hot liquid. Added in clumps or unstirred, it forms lumps with dry, uncooked centres, so it should be stirred in gradually and evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, flour, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, flour, butter. 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.

More brown gravy recipes

English 15Soup 10Rich 6Vegetable 3 See all 87 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes