Skip to main content
Main

A Good Stock Gravy

A rich beef stock made by simmering beef, water, salt, pepper, onions, mace, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

A Good Stock Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the beef in a large pot with the water.

  2. Season with salt and whole peppers.

  3. Add the fried onions, mace, and herbs.

  4. Bring to a boil and reduce by half.

  5. Strain the mixture and keep the stock for use.

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

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

  2. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Beef
Beef neck releases gelatin and flavor into the liquid, giving the stock body and richness.
Fried onions
Browned onions add color and a deeper, sweeter savory aroma to the stock.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil and reduce by half. Boiling too hard can make the stock cloudy and greasy, so keep it at a gentle simmer while it reduces. Reducing concentrates the flavor and gelatin from the beef.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, onion, mace):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, onion, mace. 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.

More beef stock recipes

Brown 13Clear 8Gravy 3Soup 3Rich 3 See all 226 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes