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A Richer Gravy

A gravy made by boiling toasted bread, onion, anchovy, port wine, cayenne pepper, mushroom ketchup, thyme, parsley, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 479 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

A Richer Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the toasted bread, onion, anchovy, port wine, cayenne, mushroom ketchup, thyme, and parsley in water.

  2. Cook for two hours.

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. Anchovy + ketchuptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Mushroom + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Toasted bread
Thickens the gravy and gives it body as it breaks down during cooking.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aromatic depth to the liquid as it simmers.
Anchovy
Dissolves into the liquid to add deep savory, umami flavor.
Port wine
Adds sweetness, fruitiness, and acidity that balance the savory notes.
Mushroom ketchup
Contributes concentrated umami and savory depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Cook for two hours. A long, gentle simmer lets the bread and onion break down and release their flavor into the water. Stopping early leaves the gravy thin and under-flavored, while boiling hard too long can over-reduce it.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, anchovy, port wine, pepper, mushroom, ketchup, thyme):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, anchovy, port wine, pepper, mushroom, ketchup, thyme. 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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