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Gravy for Game

A savory gravy made from beef or veal, onions, herbs, and corn flour, served with sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Gravy for Game

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Cut the beef into small pieces.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter and add the minced onion; cook until brown.

Simmer the gravy

  1. Add the beef, bay leaf, cloves, peppercorns, parsley, carrot, and bruised celery seed tied in muslin.

  2. Mix 2 teaspoons of corn flour with water to make a smooth paste and add it to the saucepan.

  3. Stir the sauce until it boils, then cover and simmer gently for at least an hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the sauce, let it cool, and remove any fat.

  2. Add sugar browning and salt to taste.

  3. When ready to serve, boil the sauce and stir in a spoonful or two of sherry.

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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together794 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the meat flavor and body that the gravy is built on.
Butter
Carries the onion flavor and adds richness to the gravy.
Minced onion
Browned in butter to add savory depth and color to the base.
Corn flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth gravy as it heats and simmers.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce until it boils after adding the corn flour paste. Starch must be stirred as it heats and brought to a boil to swell and thicken evenly; otherwise it can clump and leave a floury or lumpy texture.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, onion, parsley, carrot, celery, corn):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, onion, parsley, carrot, celery, corn. 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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