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Rich Brown Gravy

A savory gravy made from finely chopped meat, butter, onion, herbs, and optional wine and ketchup, thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Winter savory and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 287 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Rich Brown Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the meat

  1. Chop the meat and ham finely.

  2. In a stew pan, melt the butter and add the sliced onion and chopped meat.

  3. Cover and cook on low heat for a few minutes, stirring to prevent sticking.

  4. Once the meat is browned, gradually add the water.

Simmer

  1. When it boils, add any bones, chicken heads, or feet you have.

  2. Skim off any foam, then add the toasted bread, herbs, lemon peel, allspice, and black pepper.

  3. Cover and simmer until the liquid is reduced by half and the bones look white.

Strain and thicken

  1. Strain the gravy and let it cool, then skim off any fat.

  2. Thicken the gravy with butter and flour.

  3. For extra flavor, blend the poultry livers with butter, cayenne, nutmeg, port wine, mushroom ketchup, and lemon juice, then stir into the gravy.

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. Winter savory + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together287 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Winter savory + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together616 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Lemon + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

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

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Browns in the butter and builds the savory, rich base flavor of the gravy.
Butter
Carries the browning of the onion and meat and adds richness to the finished gravy.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, adding savory depth to the stock.
Flour
Thickens the strained liquid into a smooth, glossy gravy when cooked with butter.

The step that matters

Brown the meat before adding water. Browning on low heat with stirring builds deep flavor through the Maillard reaction. Adding water too early steams the meat and leaves the gravy pale and flat-tasting.

“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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