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To Make Veal, Mutton, or Beef Gravy

A savory gravy made with bacon or ham, meat, vegetables, herbs, and thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,077 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Make Veal, Mutton, or Beef Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Build the base

  1. Place the bacon or ham at the bottom of a stewpan.

  2. Layer the meat slices over the bacon or ham.

  3. Add the chopped onion, turnip, carrot, celery, thyme, and allspice on top of the meat.

  4. Pour ½ cup of water into the pan and set it over gentle heat.

  5. Cook until the bottom is brown, indicated by hissing sounds.

Simmer

  1. Pour boiling water over the meat and simmer gently for 1.5 hours, or less for smaller quantities.

  2. Season with salt to taste.

Thicken

  1. For thickening, melt butter in a pan until brown, then stir in flour until thick.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Bacon or ham
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the base as it browns.
Meat
Provides the main body and rich meaty flavour of the gravy.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it cooks down into the gravy.
Carrot
Contributes sweetness and body to the stock as it simmers.
Butter
Adds richness and nutty browned flavour to the thickening roux.
Flour
Thickens the gravy into a smooth, body-giving sauce when cooked with butter.

The step that matters

Browning the bottom until it hisses. Browning the meat and bacon drives Maillard reactions that build deep savoury flavour. Stop before the fat and sugars blacken, since scorched bits taste bitter and can spoil the gravy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, meat, turnip, carrot, celery, thyme, allspice):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, meat, turnip, carrot, celery, thyme, allspice. 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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