Skip to main content
Main

Gravy Made Without Meat for Fowls

A gravy made from fowl necks, feet, livers, gizzards, and herbs, thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Gravy Made Without Meat for Fowls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Wash the feet of the fowl thoroughly and cut them and the neck into small pieces.

  2. Put the pieces into a stewpan with the bread, onion, herbs, seasoning, livers, and gizzards.

  3. Pour the water over them and simmer gently for 1 hour.

Finish the gravy

  1. Remove the liver and pound it.

  2. Strain the liquid into the pounded liver.

  3. Add a thickening of butter and flour and the mushroom ketchup, then boil it up.

  4. Serve.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Necks and feet of fowls
Release gelatin and savoury flavour into the liquid, giving the gravy body.
Livers of fowls
Add rich, deep flavour and thicken the gravy when pounded into the liquid.
Butter and flour
Thicken the liquid into a smooth, glossy gravy.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour.

The step that matters

Simmering the meat gently. Gentle simmering draws gelatin and flavour from the bones and feet without making the liquid cloudy or greasy. A hard boil can toughen the meat and emulsify fat into the stock.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, bread, pepper, butter, flour, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, bread, pepper, butter, flour, mushroom, ketchup. 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 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipes