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Gravy for Joints

A simple gravy made from meat drippings, water, optional flour, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Gravy for Joints

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove the meat from the pan and pour off the fat.

  2. Add a small quantity of boiling water to the pan and wash it over the surface.

  3. If a thicker gravy is desired, dust a little flour in the pan and brown it before adding the water.

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. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

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

  3. Meat + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,529 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

Meat drippings
Provide the fat and browned meat flavor that forms the base of the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy when browned in the pan before the water is added.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour must be cooked in the hot drippings until it turns golden before liquid goes in. Cooking it removes raw starch taste and lets the flour thicken smoothly rather than clumping.

“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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