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Gravy for Fish, Fowl, or Ragout

A savory gravy made with bacon, beef, carrot, onion, bread crust, herbs, spices, anchovy, and prepared gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Gravy for Fish, Fowl, or Ragout

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a stewpan, lay the slice of bacon.

  2. Add the thinly sliced beef on top of the bacon.

  3. Slice in the carrot and onion, and add the crust of bread and sweet herbs.

  4. Sprinkle in the mace, cloves, nutmeg, and whole pepper.

  5. Add the anchovy, cover, and set on low heat for 5-6 minutes.

Make the gravy

  1. Pour in 1 quart of the prepared gravy, cover tightly, and let it boil gently until reduced by half.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main meat flavour and body that the gravy is built around.
Bacon
Releases fat and savoury flavour into the stewpan as the base begins to cook.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth as it softens in the stewpan.
Carrot
Contributes gentle sweetness and body to the stock-based gravy.
Bread crust
Helps thicken and give body to the gravy as it simmers.
Anchovy
Adds deep savoury, umami flavour that enriches the gravy without tasting fishy.

The step that matters

Reducing the gravy by half. Boiling gently with the lid on concentrates flavour and thickens the liquid. Boiling too hard or uncovered can over-reduce it or make it cloudy, so keep the heat low and steady.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, onion, bread, clove, nutmeg, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, onion, bread, clove, nutmeg, pepper. 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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