Skip to main content
Main

Cullis, or Brown Gravy

A veal and gammon-based brown gravy thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mace and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Cullis, or Brown Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the meat

  1. Layer the bottom of a stew pan with lean veal, about 1 inch thick.

  2. Cover the veal with thin slices of gammon, onions, bay leaves, sweet herbs, mace, and cloves.

  3. Cover the pan and set it over low heat until juices are released, then increase the heat slightly.

Simmer and strain

  1. When the meat is browned, fill the pan with beef broth, boil and skim it.

  2. Simmer for 1 hour, then add water mixed with flour to thicken.

  3. Boil for an additional 30 minutes and strain the gravy.

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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Clove + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean veal
Provides the meat juices and browned flavour that form the base of the gravy.
Beef broth
Supplies the liquid and savoury body that the gravy is built on.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the gravy coats the back of a spoon.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they cook down into the broth.

The step that matters

Browning the meat before adding liquid. Browning the veal and gammon through caramelises their surface proteins and sugars, building the deep colour and roasted flavour of the gravy. Adding broth too early leaves the gravy pale and flat.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

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

More brown gravy recipes

English 15Soup 10Rich 6Vegetable 3 See all 87 →

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes