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Sauce

Beef Gravy

A sauce made from beef gravy, port, and Madeira or sherry, flavoured with anchovies, lemon juice and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Beef Gravy

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Beef Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the gravy

  1. Combine beef gravy, port, and Madeira or sherry in a pot.

  2. Cover and stew until tender.

  3. Remove the lamprey and keep it hot.

Thicken and season

  1. Boil the remaining liquid with chopped anchovies, flour, and butter.

  2. Strain the gravy through a sieve.

  3. Add lemon juice and made mustard to the strained gravy.

Serve

  1. Serve with sippets of bread and horse-radish.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Mustard + horsetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together201 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  3. Beef + horsetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Flour
Starch thickens the gravy as it boils, giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, rounding out the sauce.
Anchovies
Melt into the liquid, adding savoury depth without a fishy taste.
Port
Adds sweetness and a deep, fruity note to the gravy.
Madeira or sherry
Adds aroma and a touch of acidity that lifts the rich base.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Boil the liquid with the flour and butter. The flour must boil fully in the liquid to thicken evenly without lumps and to lose its raw starchy taste. Stirring keeps it smooth.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, sherry, flour, butter, mustard, bread, horse):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sherry, flour, butter, mustard, bread, horse. 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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