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Cullis, or Thickened Gravy

A thickened beef or veal gravy made with vegetables, herbs, and allspice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Cullis, or Thickened Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In a pot, combine beef or veal, carrot, onion with cloves, celery, parsley, lemon thyme, savory, sweet basil, bay leaf, shallot, lemon peel, allspice, and ½ pint of water.

  2. Cover and simmer gently on low heat for 30 minutes until almost dry, stirring occasionally to brown the meat evenly.

  3. Add 3 pints of boiling water and boil for 2 hours to create a rich gravy.

Thicken and finish

  1. To thicken, mix 1 to 2 tablespoons of flour with a ladle of gravy in a basin until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the remaining gravy to the flour mixture, stirring quickly until well combined.

  3. Pour the mixture back into the pot and simmer for another 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until thickened.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 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 flavour and body that the long simmer draws into the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells with heat, giving the gravy body.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma as it cooks down into the stock.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour with gravy before adding it back. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps because its outer layer hydrates before the inside does. Mixing it first with a ladle of cool gravy and stirring smooth lets the starch disperse evenly, so the thickened gravy stays lump-free.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

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