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Gravy, Brown, Without Meat

A brown gravy made from onions, carrots, butter, water, herbs, and beer, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Gravy, Brown, Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the onions and carrots.

  2. Fry them in the butter until light brown.

Simmer and strain

  1. Add the boiling water and remaining ingredients.

  2. Let the mixture stew gently for about 1 hour.

  3. Strain the gravy.

Finish

  1. Let it cool.

  2. Skim off the fat.

  3. Thicken the gravy.

  4. Add a few drops of coloring if 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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + beertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together680 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Form the flavour base and add sweetness as they brown.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and savoury depth to the stock.
Butter
Carries the frying of the vegetables and helps them brown.
Boiling water
Forms the liquid body of the gravy and draws out flavour from the vegetables and herbs.
Good beer
Adds malty aroma and depth of flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Fry the onions and carrots until light brown. Browning the vegetables in butter creates savoury, caramelised flavours through the Maillard reaction and caramelisation. Pale vegetables give a flat, weak gravy, while over-darkened ones turn bitter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, butter, beer, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, butter, beer, pepper. 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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