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A Rich English Brown Gravy

A gravy made from ham, beef, eschalots or onion, herbs, and spices, simmered in water or broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

A Rich English Brown Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat and aromatics

  1. Brown the ham in a pan and remove it.

  2. In the same pan, lightly fry the neck of beef, then add it back with the ham.

  3. Add the chopped eschalots or onion and brown gently.

Make the gravy

  1. Pour in the boiling water or broth and bring to a boil, skimming off any scum.

  2. Add salt, cloves, mace, peppercorns, herbs, carrot, and celery.

  3. Boil gently until reduced to just over 1 pint, then strain.

  4. Let it cool to remove the fat, then reheat and adjust seasoning with salt and flavoring as needed.

  5. Optionally, add mushrooms or morels for extra flavor.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Neck of beef
Browning and long simmering release gelatin and savoury flavour into the gravy.
Lean ham
Browning adds savoury, smoky depth to the stock.
Eschalots or onion
Gentle browning builds sweetness and savoury aroma in the base.
Flour
Dredging the beef helps it brown and lightly thickens the gravy.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum after boiling. Skimming removes coagulated proteins and impurities that would otherwise cloud the gravy and taint its flavour as it simmers.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, beef, flour, pepper, onion, clove, carrot. 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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