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Quite Common Brown Gravy

A gravy made from sliced sheep’s melt, butter, water, and optional aromatics, simmered for 1.5 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Quite Common Brown Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the melt

  1. Cut the sheep’s melt into slices half an inch thick and lightly flour them.

  2. Fry the slices until pale brown, or melt butter in a thick saucepan and shake the slices over moderate heat until colored.

Make the gravy

  1. Gradually pour in ½ to ¾ pint of boiling water.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, then stew gently for 1.5 hours.

  3. Strain and skim off the fat before serving.

Flavor option

  1. For added flavor, brown a minced onion with the melt and add lemon thyme when serving with ducks or geese.

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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  4. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 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

Sheep’s melt
Provides the meat and drippings that give the gravy its body and savory flavor.
Butter
Carries heat for browning the slices and adds richness to the gravy.
Flour (in the method)
Lightly coats the slices so they brown evenly and help thicken the gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the melt slices. Slices must be fried or shaken until evenly colored, because browning creates the Maillard flavors that give the gravy its deep color and savory taste.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, lemon, thyme, parsley, celery, carrot):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, lemon, thyme, parsley, celery, 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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