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Good Reef or Veal Gravy

A thick gravy made from beef or veal, onions, carrots, herbs, and spices, thickened with arrowroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Good Reef or Veal Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the meat

  1. Lightly flour and fry the beef or veal in butter until browned.

  2. Drain the meat from the fat and place it in a small thick stewpan or iron saucepan.

Make the gravy

  1. Pour boiling water over the meat and skim off any foam.

  2. Add the fried onion, sliced carrot, herbs, mace, and peppercorns.

  3. Stew gently for 3 hours or more.

  4. Pass the gravy through a sieve into a clean pan and let it cool.

  5. Once cool, remove any fat from the surface.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the desired amount of gravy and thicken with arrowroot mixed with mushroom catsup if 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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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

Beef or veal
Provides the meat whose flavour and gelatin enrich the long-simmered stock.
Flour
Coats the meat so it browns well and helps thicken the gravy slightly.
Butter
Fat for frying the floured meat, adding browning and rich flavour.
Arrowroot
Thickens the gravy to a glossy, smooth consistency when heated.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth to the stock as it stews.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 3 hours or more. A gentle simmer extracts flavour and gelatin from the meat without clouding the liquid or toughening the meat. Boiling hard breaks up fat and makes the gravy cloudy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, butter, onion, carrot, thyme, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, butter, onion, carrot, thyme, 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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