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Beef Gravy

A thickened beef gravy made by simmering beef, water, shallot, salt, pepper, sauce, and thickened with arrowroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Beef Gravy

Why it works: Shallot and arrowroot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the beef into small pieces and place it in a stewpan with the cold water.

  2. Add the shallot and seasonings, then simmer gently for 3 hours.

  3. Before serving, mix the arrowroot with a little cold water and pour it into the gravy while stirring.

  4. Add the sauce and let it boil briefly.

  5. Strain the gravy into a tureen and serve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Shallot + arrowroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together15 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + arrowroottop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together329 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Shallot + saucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the main meaty flavour and body as it simmers into the liquid.
Arrowroot
Thickens the gravy into a smooth, glossy consistency when stirred into the hot liquid.
Sauce or mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Adding the arrowroot slurry. Arrowroot must be mixed with cold water first and stirred into the gravy so it disperses evenly. Added dry or unstirred, it clumps, and thickening only occurs once the mixture is hot.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, shallot, pepper, sauce. 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 gravy recipes

Soup 28Rich 9Roast 5Clear 4Sauce 3 See all 96 →

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