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Strong Gravy

A thick beef or veal gravy made with ham or bacon, vegetables, herbs, mushroom ketchup, wine, and thickened with arrowroot or flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Strong Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Place a slice of ham or bacon at the bottom of a 4-quart stewpan.

  2. Add beef or veal, carrot, onion, cloves, celery, parsley, lemon peel, thyme, mushroom ketchup, and white wine.

  3. Pour in ½ cup of water.

  4. Cover the stewpan.

  5. Simmer gently for 30 minutes until almost dry.

  6. Brown the meat on all sides.

  7. Add 3 pints of boiling water.

  8. Boil gently for 2 hours.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix 2 tablespoons of arrowroot or 3 tablespoons of flour with a ladle of gravy. Stir quickly.

  2. Add a quart of gravy.

  3. Pour the thickened gravy back into the stewpan.

  4. Simmer, stirring occasionally.

  5. Remove any scum that appears.

  6. Warm 3 tablespoons of butter over low heat. Drain off milk or water.

  7. Gradually stir in flour to form a thin paste.

  8. Cook for 15 minutes without losing color.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef or veal
Provides the meat and body that the long simmer turns into rich, savory flavor.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells during heating, giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor, and cooks with the flour into a smooth paste.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savory, umami depth to the gravy.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic flavor that brightens the rich meat broth.
Arrowroot
Thickens the gravy as an optional alternative to flour, giving a glossy finish.

The step that matters

Cook the flour paste without losing color. Cooking flour in fat develops its thickening power and removes raw starch taste. Cooking too briefly leaves a pasty flavor, while over-browning dulls the gravy's color and taste.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, carrot, onion, clove, celery, parsley. 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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