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Common Gravy

A thick beef gravy made with suet, onions, carrots, celery, and cloves, simmered in broth or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Common Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Spread the bottom of a medium-sized stewpan with butter and cover it with thin slices of beef suet.

  2. Place some slices of onions over the suet.

  3. Add the beef and any meat trimmings.

  4. Moisten with 1 quart of broth.

Make the gravy

  1. Set over high heat to boil.

  2. When the broth reduces to a glaze, reduce the heat.

  3. Allow the gravy to darken.

  4. Fill the stewpan with more broth or water.

  5. Garnish with carrots, celery, and cloves.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  4. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Melts to add fat and richness, and helps the meat brown in the pan.
Gravy beef
Provides the meat whose juices and gelatin give the gravy body and flavor.
Broth
Supplies the liquid that extracts flavor from the meat and onions as it reduces.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they cook down into the base.

The step that matters

Reducing to a glaze and letting the gravy darken. Boiling the broth down until it becomes a glaze lets the meat and onions brown and caramelize, building color and deep flavor. Reducing the heat at the right moment prevents scorching, which would leave a bitter taste.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, beef, onion, meat, carrot, celery):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Pepperfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, beef, onion, meat, carrot, celery. 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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