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Cullis, or Brown Gravy

A veal and gammon gravy simmered with onions, herbs, mace, cloves, and beef broth.

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

Prepare the base

  1. Layer lean veal in a stew pan, 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.

  4. Cook over low heat until juices are released, then increase the heat slightly.

  5. When the meat is browned, add beef broth.

Simmer and thicken

  1. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  2. Skim off foam.

  3. Simmer for 1 hour.

  4. Mix water with flour to create a thick paste.

  5. Add the paste to the pan.

  6. Boil for 30 minutes.

  7. Strain the mixture before serving.

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 meaty flavour and body that the gravy is built on.
Flour
Mixed with water into a paste that thickens the liquid as it boils.
Beef broth
Forms the liquid base of the gravy and carries the flavour of the meat.
Thin slices of undressed gammon
Adds salty, savoury cured-meat flavour to the braise.
2-3 onions
Adds sweetness and savoury depth as they cook down with the meat.

The step that matters

Adding the flour paste. Flour must be fully mixed with water before it goes in, otherwise it clumps. Boiling is needed to fully cook the starch and reach full thickness.

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.

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