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Gravy Sour

A slow-simmered beef and veal broth with vegetables and spices, finished with fat skimming and optional sauces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Gravy Sour

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, slightly brown the beef and ham in the butter without burning them.

  2. Pour in the boiling water and skim off any scum that rises to the surface.

  3. Once the scum stops appearing, add the onions, carrots, turnip, celery, mace, cloves, herbs, salt, pepper, and sugar.

  4. Let the mixture simmer slowly for 6 hours without stirring.

Strain and skim

  1. After simmering, remove from heat and let it settle.

  2. Skim off the fat and strain the liquid through a sieve or cloth.

  3. Once cooled, remove any remaining fat, leaving the sediment for thick gravies.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 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

Beef shin
Releases gelatin and meaty flavor into the broth during long simmering.
Veal knuckle
Adds gelatin and body, giving the broth a fuller, silkier texture.
Butter
Carries fat-soluble flavor and helps the meat brown lightly before simmering.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften in the broth.
Ham
Adds savory, salty depth that rounds out the meat flavor.

The step that matters

Browning the beef and ham without burning them. Gentle browning builds savory, roasted flavor through the Maillard reaction. Burnt pieces turn bitter and carry that bitterness into the whole broth.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, meat, ham, butter, onion, carrot):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, meat, ham, butter, onion, carrot. 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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