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Gravy for Roast Meat, or Plain Hashes

A savory gravy made from beef and mutton trimmings, carrots, onions, parsley, peppercorns, salt, bay leaf, garlic, allspice, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Gravy for Roast Meat, or Plain Hashes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Wash the beef and mutton trimmings in warm water.

  2. Place them in a pan with a little water at the bottom.

  3. Add carrots, onions, parsley, peppercorns, salt, bay leaf, garlic, and allspice.

  4. Stew until the meat is browned.

Simmer and strain

  1. Remove excess fat and add boiling water to the pan.

  2. Simmer gently for 3 hours.

  3. Strain the liquid through a fine sieve into a pan, discarding the fat.

  4. If a stronger flavor is desired, boil the gravy a little longer.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Parsley + allspicetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 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

Scrag end of beef
Provides meat flavor and gelatin that gives the gravy body during long simmering.
Trimmings of mutton
Adds richer, more savory meat flavor to the stock.
Carrots
Contribute sweetness and aromatic flavor to the stock.
Onions
Add savory depth and sweetness as they soften and release flavor into the liquid.

The step that matters

Stew until the meat is browned. Browning the meat before adding water builds deeper, roasted flavor through the Maillard reaction. Pale meat yields a flatter, less rich gravy.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, mutton, carrot, onion, parsley, clove, allspice):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, mutton, carrot, onion, parsley, clove, allspice. 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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