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Good Beef or Veal Gravy

A rich gravy made from beef or veal, onions, carrots, herbs, mace, peppercorns, and arrowroot thickening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Good Beef or Veal Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Lightly flour and fry the beef or veal in a bit of good butter.

  2. Drain the meat well from the fat and place it in a small thick stewpan or iron saucepan.

Make the gravy

  1. Pour in the boiling water and skim off any foam.

  2. Add the fried onion, sliced carrot, herbs, mace, and peppercorns.

  3. Stew gently for 3 to 3½ hours.

  4. Pass the gravy through a sieve into a clean pan and let it cool completely.

  5. Once cold, clear the fat from the gravy.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the desired amount for serving.

  2. If the gravy is not thick enough, stir in arrowroot mixed with a little mushroom catsup.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef or veal
Provides the meat flavour and body that gives the gravy its character as it stews.
Onion
Adds savoury, sweet aromatic depth to the stock as it cooks.
Arrowroot
Thickens the gravy into a smooth, glossy body when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam after adding the boiling water. Foam carries coagulated proteins and impurities; removing it early keeps the gravy clear and free of off flavours during the long stew.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, carrot, thyme, parsley, arrowroot, mushroom):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, carrot, thyme, parsley, arrowroot, mushroom. 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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