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To Heighten the Colour and the Flavour of Gravies

A ham-based gravy flavored with mace, cloves, bay leaf, savory herbs, eschalot or onion, parsley root, and beef stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,768 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

To Heighten the Colour and the Flavour of Gravies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a small saucepan, slowly color the diced ham in butter.

  2. Shake the pan often to detach the browning while the ham is stewing.

  3. Ensure the side of the pan is colored reddish brown before mixing in the stock.

Flavor and simmer

  1. Add mace, cloves, bay leaf, herbs, eschalots (or onion), and parsley root.

  2. Stew for 30 minutes, then boil for 20 minutes.

  3. If thickening is needed, stir in flour and simmer for 3 to 4 minutes before adding stock.

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. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Ham
Provides savory meaty flavor and browned drippings that color and flavor the gravy.
Butter
Carries the ham's flavor and helps the ham brown evenly in the pan.
Beef stock
Forms the liquid base of the gravy and carries the dissolved browning flavors.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the back of a spoon.

The step that matters

Browning the ham before adding stock. Deep reddish-brown browning from slow frying creates the concentrated flavor and color of the gravy. Pale ham yields a weak, washed-out result, so the pan should be colored well before the stock goes in.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, clove, onion, parsley, beef, flour. 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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