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Cullis, or Thickened Gravy

A beef or veal gravy thickened with flour, simmered with aromatics.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme 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 ↓

Cullis, or Thickened Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the meat

  1. In a pot, combine the beef or veal, carrot, onion, celery, parsley, lemon thyme, savory, sweet basil, bay leaf, shallot, lemon peel, allspice, and ½ pint of water.

  2. Cover and simmer gently on low heat for 30 minutes, allowing it to almost dry and brown nicely.

  3. Turn the meat to brown on all sides.

Simmer the gravy

  1. Add 3 pints of boiling water and boil for 2 hours.

Thicken and finish

  1. To thicken the gravy, mix 1 to 2 tablespoons of flour with a ladleful of the gravy in a basin until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the rest of the gravy, stirring well, then pour it back into the pot.

  3. Simmer for another 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until thickened to your liking.

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. Parsley + thymetop 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + celerytop 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

Beef or veal
Provides the meat flavour and gelatin that give the stock body and savoury depth.
Onion
Contributes sweetness and savoury depth as it softens and browns in the pot.
Flour
Starch that swells in the hot liquid, thickening the gravy to a smooth consistency.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and aromatic depth to the stock.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour with a ladleful of gravy before adding it. Flour dropped straight into hot liquid clumps as its outer layer gels before the starch disperses. Mixing it first into a smooth slurry, then stirring it in gradually, lets the starch granules separate and thicken evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, clove, celery, parsley, lemon, thyme):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, clove, celery, parsley, lemon, thyme. 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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