Name: To Heighten the Colour and the Flavour of Gravies
Ingredients: 1 to 2 ounces lean unboiled ham, diced; less than 1 ounce butter; 1 blade mace; 2 to 3 cloves; 1 bay leaf; a few small sprigs of savory herbs; 1 to 2 shallots or 1 teaspoon minced onion; a little young parsley root (if available); 1 teaspoon flour (optional)

Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

To Heighten the Colour and the Flavour of Gravies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the flavoring

In a small saucepan, slowly colour the diced ham in butter.
Add mace, cloves, bay leaf, herbs, shallots, and parsley root, then stir and cook for a few minutes until fragrant.
Shake the pan often to detach the browning while the ham is cooking.

Add to the stock

Gradually add this mixture to your stock after it has simmered for 30 minutes.
If thickening is needed, stir in flour and simmer for 3‑4 minutes before adding stock.

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.

Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,677 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,081 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,768 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean unboiled ham: Browns in butter to build savoury, roasted flavour in the base.
Butter: Carries the aromatics and helps the ham brown evenly in the pan.
Shallots: Add mild sweetness and aroma as they soften in the fat.
Flour: Thickens the gravy slightly when stirred in and simmered.

The step that matters

Shake the pan often while the ham cooks. Frequent shaking lifts the browned bits from the pan so they do not scorch. Scorched residue turns bitter and darkens the flavoring, so the browning stays rich rather than burnt.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, butter, clove, shallot, parsley, flour):

Capersfits better
Thymefits better
Nutmegfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, clove, shallot, parsley, flour. 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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To Heighten the Colour and the Flavour of Gravies