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Cullis, or Brown Gravy

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

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 the bottom of a stew pan with lean veal, covering it 1 inch thick.

  2. Top 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.

Make the gravy

  1. Once the meat is browned, fill the pan with beef broth, bring to a boil, skim, and then simmer for 1 hour.

  2. Mix water with enough flour to thicken the gravy, add to the pan, and boil for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the gravy before serving.

Storage

  1. It can be stored for up to a week.

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
Browns in the pan and builds the rich meaty flavour of the gravy.
Gammon
Adds salty, savoury depth that seasons the broth as it cooks.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding body and savoury flavour to the gravy.
Beef broth
Forms the liquid base of the gravy and carries the flavour of the meat and aromatics.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a gravy with a smooth, coating texture.

The step that matters

Browning the meat before adding the broth. Browning the veal and gammon through the Maillard reaction creates deep, roasted flavour. Adding liquid too early leaves the gravy pale and flat-tasting.

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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