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A Family Cullis

A stew made with butter, flour, broth, gravy, wine, herbs, mushrooms, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and basil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,768 recipes mention both. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

  1. Melt butter in a stewpan and stir in flour until it turns a fine yellow color.

  2. Add thin broth, gravy, white wine, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, sweet basil, cloves, nutmeg, mushrooms, pepper, and salt.

  3. Let it stew for an hour over low heat.

  4. Skim off all the fat and strain through a fine sieve.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Thyme + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Parsley + basiltop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Thyme + clovetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,210 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

Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth, lightly body-rich sauce when cooked with butter.
Butter
Carries flavor and adds richness to the roux base.
Thin broth
Forms the liquid base that the stew reduces and flavors.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the savory base.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the butter. Cooking the flour until it turns a fine yellow color removes its raw taste and lets it thicken evenly. Stopping too early leaves a pasty flavor, and cooking too long darkens the color and weakens thickening.

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, white wine, parsley, thyme, basil, nutmeg):

  1. Marjorambetter flavor fit
  2. Winter savorybetter flavor fit
  3. Tarragonbetter flavor fit
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, white wine, parsley, thyme, basil, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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