Skip to main content
Main

A Rich Gravy

A gravy made from beef, onions, water, herbs, and ham or bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

A Rich Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut beef into thin slices.

  2. Slice onions thinly and coat both beef and onions with flour.

Brown and build the liquid

  1. Fry the beef and onions until light pale brown, avoiding any blackening.

  2. Place the beef and onions in a stew-pan.

  3. Pour boiling water over the browned bits in the frying pan and boil.

  4. Pour this liquid over the meat in the stew-pan.

Simmer

  1. Add a bunch of parsley, thyme, savory, a small bit of marjoram, tarragon, mace, allspice berries, black peppercorns, and cloves.

  2. Simmer until fully flavored.

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 + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Marjoram + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together148 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Thyme + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 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
Provides the main meat flavor and body of the gravy as it simmers.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they brown and soften in the liquid.
Flour (in the method)
Coats the beef and onions so they brown well and help thicken the liquid.
Water
Forms the base liquid that extracts flavor from the browned bits and meat.

The step that matters

Fry the beef and onions until light pale brown. Browning builds savory flavor through the Maillard reaction, but blackened or burnt flour and meat turn bitter, so the color should stay light and even.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

More beef gravy recipes

Soup 28Rich 9Roast 5Clear 4Sauce 3 See all 96 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes