Skip to main content
Main

Beef Gravy Sauce

A rich beef gravy made with ham or bacon, butter, onion, beef, water, bread, herbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beef Gravy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a thick, well-tinned saucepan, add the ham or bacon, butter, and onion.

  2. Place the beef on top, scoring it to increase surface area.

  3. Cover the saucepan and set it on a low heat.

  4. When the meat begins to brown, turn it to brown slightly without burning.

Simmer and strain

  1. Pour in the boiling water and bring to a boil, skimming off any scum.

  2. Add the toasted bread, savory or thyme, parsley, lemon peel, allspice, and black pepper.

  3. Cover the saucepan tightly and let it simmer gently for about 2 hours.

  4. Strain the gravy through a sieve into a basin.

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

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

  2. Winter savory + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together863 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the meat flavour and body that the gravy is built on.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the meat and onion brown gently.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth as it softens and browns in the fat.
Toasted bread
Adds body and helps thicken the gravy as it simmers.

The step that matters

Browning the meat without burning it. Browning builds deep savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction, but scorched fat and sugars turn bitter and can taint the whole gravy. Keep the heat low and turn the meat as soon as it colours lightly.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes