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Strong Savoury Gravy

A hearty beef or veal gravy made with ham or bacon, vegetables, herbs, and spices, simmered and boiled for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Strong Savoury Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the slices of ham or bacon at the bottom of a 4‑quart stewpan.

  2. Add the beef or veal, carrot, onion, celery, parsley, lemon‑thyme, savoury, basil, bay leaf, shallot, lemon peel, and allspice.

Make the gravy

  1. Pour in ½ pint of water, cover, and simmer gently on low heat for 30 minutes until almost dry.

  2. Carefully brown the meat on all sides.

  3. Add 3 pints of boiling water.

  4. Boil for 2 hours, skimming off any impurities.

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

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

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef or veal
Provides the meat that releases flavour and gelatin into the liquid as it cooks.
Ham or bacon
Adds salty, smoky fat that seasons the stock and builds savoury depth.
Onion
Contributes sweetness and aromatic flavour as it softens and cooks down into the stock.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the liquid as it simmers.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, vegetal flavour that rounds out the stock.

The step that matters

Browning the meat on all sides. Browning triggers the Maillard reaction, creating deeper, roasted flavour compounds in the meat and fat. Dry, evenly coloured meat gives a richer base than pale, steamed meat.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Orangefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, beef, carrot, onion, clove, celery, 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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