Skip to main content
Main

A Quick Made Rich Gravy

A quick gravy made from beef, onion, water, flour, allspice, and optional ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

A Quick Made Rich Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the gravy beef in a small saucepan and top with sliced onion.

  2. Set the saucepan by the fire to draw the gravy for 20 to 30 minutes.

  3. Add a slight dust of flour and a few allspice.

  4. Gradually add boiling water, about ¼ pint total, while rubbing the meat each time.

  5. Do not let it boil; simmer gently until needed.

  6. Strain the gravy before serving.

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

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

  2. Flour + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Allspice + ketchuptop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together302 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Gravy beef
Provides the meaty flavour and body that the liquid draws out during gentle cooking.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth to the gravy as it softens and flavours the liquid.
Flour
Lightly thickens the gravy so it coats the spoon rather than running thin.

The step that matters

Do not let it boil; simmer gently until needed.. Boiling toughens the meat proteins and can make the gravy cloudy and greasy. A gentle simmer keeps the meat tender and the liquid clear while flavour is drawn out slowly.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, flour, ketchup):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, flour, ketchup. 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes