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Brown Gravy for Poultry or Game

A savory gravy made from poultry or game organs, simmered with onion, pepper, and butter, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Brown Gravy for Poultry or Game

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Wash the neck, gizzard, heart, and livers in salt and water.

  2. Place them in a saucepan with ½ cup cold water or weak stock, 3 peppercorns, and a small piece of onion.

  3. Cover and stew gently for at least 2 hours.

  4. Strain the stock, which should be about ½ cup.

Make the gravy

  1. In a pan, heat 1 ounce of butter until it bubbles.

  2. Add a little sliced onion and cook until brown but not burnt.

  3. Stir in 1 teaspoon of flour and let it brown.

  4. Add the strained stock and bring to a boil, stirring constantly.

  5. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and catsup or Harvey's sauce to taste.

  6. Strain again and serve in a tureen.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Liver + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,420 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Browned in butter, it thickens the stock into a smooth gravy.
Butter
Carries the browning of onion and flour and adds richness to the gravy.
Poultry or game neck, gizzard, heart, and livers
Provide the concentrated meaty flavor that the stock is built on.

The step that matters

Stirring the stock into the browned flour. Adding liquid to flour in hot butter can clump it; stirring constantly while bringing it to a boil disperses the starch so the gravy turns smooth rather than lumpy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, butter, flour, pepper, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, butter, flour, 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.

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