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Gravies Made Without Meat

A savory gravy made from onions, flour, butter or lard, beer or ale, water, walnut ketchup, lemon peel, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Gravies Made Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Slice the onion and dust with flour.

  2. In a frying pan, heat butter or lard and brown the onion slices.

  3. Transfer the browned onions to a saucepan.

  4. Add beer or ale, water, walnut ketchup, and lemon peel.

  5. Season with salt and pepper, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes.

  6. Strain the mixture through a sieve into a basin.

  7. Let it cool, then remove any fat or scum.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Provides the main savoury base and sweetness as it browns.
Flour
Dusted on the onion slices to help thicken the gravy.
Butter or lard
Fat for browning the onion, adding richness and flavour.
Beer or ale
Adds liquid and malty, slightly bitter depth to the gravy.
Walnut ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the onion slices. Browning develops deep flavour through the Maillard reaction and caramelisation. Onion that is pale or burnt will make the gravy taste flat or bitter, so brown gently until golden.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, beer, walnut, ketchup, lemon, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, beer, walnut, ketchup, lemon, pepper. 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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