Skip to main content
Main

To Make Gravy Without Meat

A savory gravy made from onions, butter, water, beer, spices, herbs, and toasted bread, without any meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

To Make Gravy Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the sliced onions in butter until brown.

  2. Add water, beer, peppercorns, salt, lemon peel, cloves, mace, walnut pickle, mushroom catsup, soy sauce, essence of anchovy, sweet herbs, and toasted bread to the pan.

  3. Simmer all ingredients in a covered saucepan for 20 minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture and let it cool, then remove the fat.

  5. Use the gravy as desired.

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Clove + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Browned in butter to build a deep, savoury base for the gravy.
Butter
Carries the onions as they brown, adding richness to the base.
Beer
Adds liquid and a malty, slightly bitter depth during simmering.
Mushroom catsup
Adds concentrated savoury umami flavour to the gravy.
Essence of anchovy
Contributes salty, savoury depth that rounds out the flavour.
Toasted bread
Its browned crust adds toasty flavour and body to the liquid.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, beer, lemon, clove, walnut, mushroom. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes