Skip to main content
Main

Gravy Without Meat

A simple gravy made from onion, carrot, dripping, water, and vegetable extract, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Gravy Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the onion and carrot.

Make the gravy

  1. In a pan, fry the onion and carrot in dripping until nicely browned.

  2. Add the water and vegetable extract to the pan.

  3. Bring to a boil, then season with salt and pepper.

  4. Cook for 10 minutes.

  5. Skim off any fat and strain the gravy.

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

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Onion
Browns in the dripping, adding savoury depth and sweetness to the gravy.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body as it softens and browns with the onion.
Dripping
Fat that carries heat for browning the vegetables and adds rich flavour.
Vegetable extract
Concentrated seasoning that gives the water a savoury, vegetable-based flavour.

The step that matters

Browning the onion and carrot in dripping. Browning triggers the Maillard reaction, which creates deep savoury flavour. Pale vegetables produce a flat, weak-tasting gravy, so they should be cooked until well coloured before the water is added.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes