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Quick Gravy

A savory beef gravy made with onion, carrots, butter, water, bouquet garni, cloves, mace, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Quick Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the vegetables and beef

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan.

  2. Add the chopped onion and carrots and fry until golden brown.

  3. Remove the vegetables to one side of the pan, add the beef and fry until browned.

  4. Mix the beef with the vegetables and transfer to a saucepan.

  5. Add a little water to the frying pan and boil, then pour into the saucepan.

Simmer the gravy

  1. Add 1½ cups of water, bouquet garni, cloves, mace, salt, and pepper.

  2. Simmer for 2 hours.

  3. Drain into a basin.

Finish and thicken

  1. Once cooled, remove all fat.

  2. Return the gravy to a stewpan.

  3. Mix the flour with 1 teaspoon of butter until smooth, then stir into the hot gravy, avoiding boiling.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Browning and slow simmering release meaty flavour into the gravy.
Onion
Frying until golden builds sweetness and savoury depth in the base.
Carrots
Frying adds gentle sweetness and body to the stock.
Flour
Mixed with butter and stirred in, it thickens the gravy as it heats.
Butter
Fat for frying the vegetables and beef, and enriching the thickening paste.

The step that matters

Stir the flour and butter into the gravy without boiling. Flour thickens best when whisked smoothly into the hot liquid. Boiling after adding it can cause lumps and a thinner, less stable texture.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, butter, beef, clove, pepper, 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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