Skip to main content
Main

Cullis or Brown Gravy

A brown gravy made from veal, gammon, onions, bay leaves, herbs, mace, cloves, beef broth, water, and flour.

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

Why it works: Mace and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Cullis or Brown Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Lay veal in a stewpan to cover the bottom an inch thick.

  2. Cover veal with gammon, onions, bay leaves, sweet herbs, mace, and cloves.

  3. Cover the stewpan.

  4. Set the stewpan over a slow fire until juices come out.

  5. Increase heat slightly until meat is browned.

Make the gravy

  1. Fill the pan with beef broth.

  2. Boil the broth.

  3. Skim the broth.

  4. Simmer for 1 hour.

  5. Mix water with flour to thicken.

  6. Add the mixture to the gravy.

  7. Boil for 30 minutes.

  8. Strain the gravy before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Clove + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean veal
Browns and releases juices that give the gravy its meaty flavour.
Beef broth
Forms the liquid base of the gravy and carries the flavour of the meat and aromatics.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a gravy with body when mixed with water and added.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth to the broth as they cook.
Gammon
Adds salty, smoky meat flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Increase heat slightly until meat is browned. Browning the meat through Maillard reactions creates deep, roasted flavours that cannot be made later. Heat that is too low only steams the meat, leaving the gravy pale and flat.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, clove, beef, 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.

More brown gravy recipes

English 15Soup 10Rich 6Vegetable 3 See all 87 →

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes