Skip to main content
Main

Meat Grayy

A veal gravy made with butter, carrot, onions, broth, salt, peppercorns, bay leaf, and thyme.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,563 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Meat Grayy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the veal and sliced carrot; stir until the meat is browned.

  3. Add the sliced onions and stir until they are nearly fried.

  4. Pour in the broth or water, then add salt, peppercorns, bay leaf, and thyme.

  5. Boil gently for 2-3 hours, adding water if it reduces too much.

  6. Strain the gravy 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.

  1. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Veal + carrottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides meat flavor and body to the gravy as it simmers and releases its gelatin.
Butter
Carries the initial browning of the veal, carrot, and onions and adds richness.
Onions
Caramelize while frying, adding sweetness and depth of flavor to the gravy.
Broth or water
Forms the liquid base that extracts flavor from the meat and vegetables during simmering.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 2-3 hours, adding water if it reduces too much.. A gentle simmer extracts flavor and gelatin slowly, while a hard boil reduces the liquid too fast and can make the gravy cloudy. Keeping the meat submerged ensures even flavor extraction.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, carrot, onion):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Celeryfits about as well
  3. Thymethe original
  4. Garlicfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, carrot, onion. 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 veal gravy recipes

Soup 3 See all 51 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes