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Gravy in Haste

A quick gravy made with lean meat, onion, carrot, turnip, thyme, parsley, butter, spices, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Gravy in Haste

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the meat, onion, carrot, turnip, thyme, and parsley finely.

Make the gravy

  1. In a thick saucepan, melt the butter and add the chopped ingredients.

  2. Stir until slightly browned.

  3. Add spices and water in the proportion of 1 pint to 1 pound of meat.

  4. Clear the gravy from scum and let it boil for half an hour.

  5. Strain the gravy for use.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean meat
Provides the main body and savoury flavour of the gravy.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and, when browned, adds richer flavour.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth as it softens and browns.
Water
Extracts flavour from the meat and vegetables to form the liquid base.

The step that matters

Stir until slightly browned. Browning the chopped ingredients in butter builds deeper, roasted flavour through the Maillard reaction. Too little browning leaves the gravy flat, while scorching makes it bitter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, carrot, turnip, thyme, parsley, butter, clove):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, carrot, turnip, thyme, parsley, butter, clove. 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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