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Cullis, or a Thick Gravy

A thick gravy made with ham, veal, vegetables, herbs, and spices, simmered and thickened with flour or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cullis, or a Thick Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a pan, combine ham, veal, celery, carrot, turnip, onion, leek, sweet herbs, allspice, black pepper, mace, lemon peel, and bay leaves.

  2. Add 4 cups of water and simmer until it turns a light brown color, being careful not to let it burn.

  3. Add enough beef stock to cover the mixture and bring to a boil.

Thicken and finish

  1. Skim off any fat and thicken with a mixture of flour and water or flour and butter.

  2. Let it boil gently for 45 minutes, then season with cayenne pepper, lemon juice, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Strain through a tamis cloth or sieve.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Adds savory, meaty flavor to the stock as it simmers.
Veal
Contributes gelatin and body, giving the gravy a richer mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth gravy as it cooks.
Butter
Combines with the flour to form a roux that thickens and adds richness.
Onion
Builds savory depth and aroma as it browns in the simmering liquid.

The step that matters

Simmering to a light brown without burning. Browning the meat and vegetables develops deeper flavor through the Maillard reaction, but scorched solids turn bitter and taint the whole gravy.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, veal, celery, carrot, turnip, onion, leek):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, veal, celery, carrot, turnip, onion, leek. 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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