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A Rich Gravy

A thick, herb‑flavored beef gravy made with sliced beef, onions, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 the onions

  1. Cut the beef into thin slices.

  2. Slice the onions thinly and flour them.

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

Make the gravy

  1. Put the fried onions into a stewpan and pour boiling water over the browning in the frying pan.

  2. Boil it up and pour it over the meat.

  3. Add a bunch of parsley, thyme, savory, a small bit of knotted marjoram, tarragon, some mace, allspice berries, black peppercorns, and a clove or two, along with a bit of ham or bacon.

  4. Simmer until all the juices from the meat are extracted, skimming often.

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
Supplies the meat juices that are simmered out to form the body of the gravy.
Onions
Fried to light brown, they add sweetness and deep savoury flavour to the liquid.
Flour
Coats the onion slices, helping the browning stick and lightly thickening the gravy.
Ham or bacon
Adds salty, smoky fat that enriches the savoury depth of the liquid.

The step that matters

Fry the onions to light pale brown. Onions darken quickly, and blackened pieces turn bitter. Stopping at light pale brown gives sweetness and colour without acrid, burnt flavour in the finished 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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