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Brown Gravy

A savory brown gravy made with butter, flour, water, ale, onion, lemon peel, cloves, mace, pepper, mushroom pickle, ketchup, and anchovy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Brown Gravy

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Brown Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and let it brown.

  3. Gradually stir in the water and ale.

  4. Add the onion, lemon peel, cloves, mace, and pepper.

  5. Stir in the mushroom pickle, ketchup, and anchovy.

  6. Boil together for 15 minutes, then strain 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.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavour of the spices through the gravy.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the liquid and, browned in butter, adds a toasted, nutty colour and flavour.
Ale
Adds liquid and a malty, slightly bitter depth to the gravy's flavour.
Mushroom pickle
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the gravy.
Anchovy
Melts into the liquid, adding savoury depth without a fishy taste.

The step that matters

Let the flour brown in the butter. Cooking the flour in fat toasts it and builds colour and nutty flavour. Stop too early and the gravy tastes raw and pale; too long and it turns bitter and dark.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, beer, onion, lemon, clove, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, beer, onion, lemon, clove, pepper. 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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