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A Rich Gravy

A gravy made from beef, onions, flour, water, herbs, and ham or bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

A Rich Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut beef into thin slices as needed.

  2. Slice onions thinly and coat both beef and onions with flour.

  3. Fry the beef and onions until light pale brown, avoiding blackening.

Make the gravy

  1. Transfer the beef and onions to a stewpan and pour boiling water over the browned bits in the frying pan.

  2. Boil the mixture and pour it over the meat in the stewpan.

  3. Add parsley, thyme, savory, a small bit of knotted marjoram, tarragon, mace, allspice berries, black peppercorns, and a couple of cloves.

  4. Add a bit of ham or gammon or bacon and simmer until all juices are extracted from the meat.

  5. Skim the surface frequently, especially when it begins to boil.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Marjoram + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together148 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Thyme + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together528 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

Beef
Provides the meat and juices that give the gravy its body and savoury flavour.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they brown and dissolve into the liquid.
Flour
Coats the meat and onions so they brown well and help thicken the gravy.
Ham or gammon of bacon
Adds salty, smoky depth to the savoury flavour of the stock.

The step that matters

Frying the beef and onions. Browning under light pale brown builds savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction, but blackening turns the coating bitter and can taint the whole gravy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, flour, parsley, thyme, marjoram, tarragon):

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Fennelfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, flour, parsley, thyme, marjoram, tarragon. 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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