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Gravy for Game

A savory gravy made from beef or veal, onions, herbs, and corn flour, simmered for at least an hour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Gravy for Game

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cut the beef into small pieces.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter and add the minced onion; cook until browned.

  3. Add the bay leaf, cloves, peppercorns, parsley, carrot, and bruised celery seed tied in muslin.

  4. Mix the corn flour with water to make a smooth paste and add it to the saucepan.

  5. Stir the sauce until it boils, then cover and simmer gently for at least an hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the sauce, let it cool, and remove any fat.

  2. Add sugar browning if needed and season with salt to taste.

  3. When ready to serve, boil the sauce and stir in a spoonful or two of sherry.

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

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together794 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the meaty flavour and body that the simmered sauce is built on.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavour while the onion cooks and browns.
Onion
Browning the minced onion in butter builds savoury, aromatic depth in the sauce.
Corn flour
Starch that thickens the sauce to a smooth, lightly body-filled gravy when boiled.

The step that matters

Adding the corn flour paste. Mix the corn flour with water into a smooth paste first, then stir while the sauce comes to the boil. Starch lumps if added dry, and it only thickens fully once it reaches a boil.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, onion, parsley, carrot, celery, corn):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, onion, parsley, carrot, celery, corn. 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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