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Strong Savoury Gravy, Alias “brown Sauce,” Alias “grand Espagnol.”

A hearty beef or veal gravy made with ham or bacon, vegetables, herbs, and spices, simmered and boiled to a rich brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Strong Savoury Gravy, Alias “brown Sauce,” Alias “grand Espagnol.”

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a 4-quart stew-pan, place the slices of ham or bacon at the bottom.

  2. Add the beef or veal, carrot, onion with cloves, celery, parsley, lemon-thyme, savory, basil, bay leaf, shallot, lemon peel, and allspice.

Brown and simmer

  1. Pour in ½ cup of water, cover, and simmer gently on low heat for 30 minutes until almost dry.

  2. Carefully turn the meat to brown it evenly on all sides.

  3. Add 3 pints of boiling water and boil for 2 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef or veal
Provides the meat body and savoury flavour that gives the sauce its richness.
Ham or bacon
Adds smoky, salty fat that flavours the stock as it renders.
Onion
Contributes sweetness and aromatic depth as it softens and browns slowly.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the stock during long simmering.
Celery
Contributes savoury, herbal aroma to the stock base.

The step that matters

Turning the meat to brown it evenly. Browning the meat develops deep, roasted flavour through the Maillard reaction. Turning it carefully keeps it from sticking and burning, so the colour and taste spread evenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, beef, carrot, onion, clove, celery, parsley):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Orangefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, beef, carrot, onion, clove, celery, parsley. 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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