Skip to main content
Main

Gravy for Roast Fowls, &C.

A savory gravy made from giblets, water, salt, pepper, cloves, turnip, carrot, onion, and flour or rice flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Gravy for Roast Fowls, &C.

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer the giblets

  1. Clean the giblets and place them in a saucepan.

  2. Cover with cold water and add salt, pepper, cloves, turnip, carrot, and onion.

  3. Simmer slowly for 2 hours.

Finish the gravy

  1. Strain the gravy, add browning, and thicken with flour.

  2. Boil briefly and serve hot.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Giblets
Slowly simmered in water, they release savory flavor and body into the gravy.
Flour or rice flour
Its starch swells when heated in liquid, thickening the gravy.
Browning
Adds a deeper brown color and a roasted, savory tone to the gravy.

The step that matters

Thickening with flour and boiling briefly. Starch thickens only when the liquid is hot enough to swell the granules. Boiling briefly thickens the gravy fully and cooks out the raw, pasty taste of the flour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, clove, turnip, carrot, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, clove, turnip, carrot, 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes