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Meat Gravy

A veal and carrot gravy simmered with onions, herbs, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,563 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Meat Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the veal and sliced carrot; stir until the meat is turning brown.

  3. Add the sliced onions and stir until they are nearly fried.

  4. Cover with broth or water, then add salt, peppercorns, bay leaf, and thyme.

  5. Boil gently for 2-3 hours, adding water if it reduces too much.

  6. 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. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Veal + carrottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides meat flavor and gelatin that gives the gravy body as it simmers.
Butter
Carries the browning of the meat and vegetables and adds richness.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they cook down in the pot.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and aromatic flavor to the simmering liquid.

The step that matters

Brown the veal and vegetables before adding liquid. Browning creates Maillard reactions that build deep, roasted flavor. Pale, steamed meat and onions produce a flat-tasting gravy that no amount of simmering fully fixes.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, carrot, onion):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Celeryfits about as well
  3. Thymethe original
  4. Garlicfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, carrot, onion. 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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