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For the Brown Gravy

A savory gravy made from giblets, vegetables, herbs, and beef extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

For the Brown Gravy

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the giblets well and chop them into small pieces.

  2. Skin and slice the onion and carrot.

Brown the base

  1. Melt the dripping in a pan, then add the giblets and sliced vegetables.

  2. Fry until they are light brown.

Simmer and strain

  1. Add the herbs, spices, and salt.

  2. Pour in the cold water and add the extract of beef.

  3. Bring to a boil, then simmer for one hour.

  4. Strain into a basin and let it cool to remove the fat.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Giblets
Provide the meaty body and rich flavour that the gravy is built on.
Dripping
Carries heat for frying and adds savoury, roasted fat flavour.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth as it browns and softens in the fat.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and body to the stock as it simmers.
Extract of beef
Intensifies the beefy flavour of the water-based liquid.

The step that matters

Frying until light brown. Browning the giblets and vegetables in the hot fat develops savoury, roasted flavours through the Maillard reaction. Pale frying gives a flat-tasting gravy, while over-browning can make it bitter.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, onion, thyme, parsley):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, onion, thyme, parsley. 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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