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Cullis for Gravies or Sauces

A thick sauce made by simmering bacon or ham, veal, onions, carrot, parsnip, and water, then thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,097 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Cullis for Gravies or Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the meat

  1. In a saucepan, combine bacon or ham and veal.

  2. Add onions, carrot, parsnip, and water.

  3. Cook on low heat to extract juices from the meat.

  4. Increase heat until meat nearly sticks to the pan.

  5. Lower heat again to let veal stick to the bottom slowly for browning.

  6. Remove meat and vegetables from the pan.

Make the sauce

  1. In the same pan, mix butter and flour until smooth, then cook until light brown.

  2. Add hot broth and return meat to the pan.

  3. Simmer for 2 hours, skimming off fat often.

  4. Strain through a coarse cloth and use as needed.

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 + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

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

  3. Parsnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together669 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + parsniptop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,054 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Breaks down into gelatin and juices that give the sauce body and a rich meaty flavor.
Bacon or ham
Adds salty, smoky meat flavor and fat that carries aroma into the sauce.
Butter
Carries fat and flavor and, with flour, forms the roux that thickens the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter into a roux, adding body and smoothness.
Onions
Release sweetness and aromatic flavor as they cook down into the broth.

The step that matters

Browning the veal. Meat that is only pale gives a flat-tasting sauce. Browning builds deep flavors through the Maillard reaction, so the meat should sear slowly without burning and sticking too hard to the pan.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, veal, carrot, parsnip, butter, flour):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, veal, carrot, parsnip, butter, 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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