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Cheap Gravy for a Roast Fowl

A simple gravy made by simmering a fowl neck in water, seasoning, and reducing the liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cheap Gravy for a Roast Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer the neck

  1. Boil the neck of the fowl in ½ cup of water with a little salt, pepper, and any spices or herbs you prefer.

  2. Stew gently for 1 hour or more to avoid reducing the liquid too much.

Finish the gravy

  1. When the fowl is ready, drain the fat from the dripping pan and strain the liquid from the neck into it.

  2. Heat the gravy, adding more salt and pepper or cayenne if needed, and serve hot.

Prepare the fowl

  1. Baste the fowl with good butter and dust it with flour before roasting.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Neck of fowl
Releases flavour and body into the liquid as it simmers, forming the base of the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the fowl brown during roasting.
Flour
Dusted on the fowl, it helps form a browned, lightly crisp surface while roasting.

The step that matters

Stew gently rather than boiling hard. A gentle simmer draws flavour from the neck slowly while limiting evaporation. Vigorous boiling reduces the liquid quickly, leaving a thick, over-concentrated gravy with less flavour balance.

“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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