Skip to main content
Main

Beef Gravy

A hearty beef gravy made with beef, vegetables, lemon thyme, mushroom ketchup, wine, and water.

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

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Beef Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove any gills from the beef.

  2. Cut the beef into pieces.

  3. Chop the carrot, onion, celery, and garlic.

Braise the beef

  1. In a pot, combine the beef, chopped vegetables, lemon thyme, lemon peel, mushroom ketchup, wine, and water, then cover the pot.

  2. Simmer for 30 minutes until almost dry, stirring occasionally.

  3. Brown the meat on all sides.

  4. Add 3 pints of boiling water.

  5. Boil gently for 2 hours.

Thicken and season

  1. Mix a little flour with cold water.

  2. Add the flour mixture to the boiling sauce.

  3. Season with salt if necessary.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main body and meaty flavour, and becomes tender during long gentle simmering.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth, balancing the richness of the meat and sauce.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth that gives the gravy its characteristic richness.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells when heated, giving the gravy body.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture to the boiling sauce. Flour mixed with cold water is a slurry that can clump if poured in carelessly. Add it slowly into the hot liquid while stirring, so the starch disperses and thickens the gravy smoothly as it heats.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, onion, clove, celery, garlic, thyme):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, onion, clove, celery, garlic, thyme. 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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes