Why it works: Meat and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,777 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓
Gravy Stock
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Chop the bones from roast meat into small pieces.
Fry the bones in a pan with a little dripping until browned.
Remove all the fat from the pan.
Simmer and strain
Add enough stock or water to cover the bones.
Season with salt and pepper.
Boil for about 1 hour.
Strain the mixture and use as required.
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.
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Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together8,777 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Bones from roast meat
- Provide the collagen and roasted flavour that give the stock body and savoury depth.
- Dripping (or fat)
- Carries heat for browning the bones and adds rich, savoury flavour.
- Stock or water
- Acts as the liquid that extracts flavour and gelatin from the bones during boiling.
The step that matters
Fry the bones until browned. Browning triggers the Maillard reaction, which creates deeper, roasted flavours in the liquid. Pale bones produce a flatter, less rich gravy stock.
“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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