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To Make Gravy for Poultry or Game

A thick gravy made by simmering beef, onions, herbs, and spices in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove 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 ↓

To Make Gravy for Poultry or Game

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Cut the gravy beef into small pieces and season with salt, pepper, and flour.

  2. Melt butter in a frying pan and add the sliced onion and shallot; cook until pale brown.

  3. Add the beef to the pan and fry until browned.

Make the stock

  1. Pour cold water into the pan and transfer everything to a stewpan.

  2. Add enough water to make 1 quart, then add mace, cloves, peppercorns, herbs, and parsley.

  3. Simmer for 5 hours, then strain the gravy into a basin.

Make a second stock

  1. Return the meat to the saucepan and add more water to make a second stock.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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

Gravy beef
Browned meat builds the savoury flavour and body of the stock during long simmering.
Flour
Coats the meat and helps thicken the gravy as its starch is cooked.
Butter
Carries heat for browning and adds richness and flavour to the base.
Onion
Softens and browns, adding sweetness and aroma to the stock.
Shallot
Adds a mild, sweet aroma that deepens the gravy's flavour.

The step that matters

Browning the beef until browned. Frying the meat until well coloured triggers the Maillard reaction, creating roasted savoury flavours. Pale meat gives a flatter, less rich gravy after the long simmer.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, flour, butter, onion, shallot, clove. 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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