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Meat Gravies and Sauces

A gravy made from meat, flour, and liquid, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Meat Gravies and Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the drippings

  1. Fry enough meat for your party, leaving some in the pan for gravy.

  2. Gash or mince the leftover meat and cook out all the juice without scorching.

  3. Discard the refuse meat.

Make the gravy

  1. Rub a spoonful of flour with cold milk, water, or broth until smooth.

  2. Add the thickening to the pan and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Thin with boiling water to desired consistency.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Meat + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,703 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + milktop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Thickens the drippings into a smooth gravy as its starch swells in the liquid.
Meat
Its fat and browned juices form the base flavor of the gravy.

The step that matters

Cook out the juice without scorching. Browned bits left in the pan add deep flavor, but if they burn they turn bitter and dark. Gentle cooking keeps the drippings tasty and the gravy clean-flavored.

“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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