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Brown Gravy

A gravy made from sliced sheep's meat, flour, butter, water, pepper, salt, optional onion and lemon thyme, simmered for 1.5 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Brown Gravy

Why it works: Lemon and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Brown Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the meat

  1. Cut the sheep's meat into slices half an inch thick and lightly flour them.

  2. Fry the slices until pale brown.

  3. Melt butter in a thick saucepan and shake the slices over moderate heat until colored.

Make the gravy

  1. Gradually pour ½ to ¾ pint of boiling water over the slices.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, then stew gently for 1.5 hours.

Finish

  1. Strain the gravy and skim off the fat before serving.

  2. For ducks or geese, brown a minced onion with the meat and add a sprig of lemon thyme.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sheep's meat
Provides the main flavour, and slow stewing makes it tender.
Flour
Coats the slices to help them brown and thickens the gravy as it cooks.
Butter
Carries heat for browning the slices and adds rich flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Shake the slices in butter until colored. Browning the floured surface through the Maillard reaction builds the deep colour and savoury flavour of the gravy. Pale slices give a weaker, flatter taste, so cook them until evenly coloured before adding water.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, pepper, lemon, thyme):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, pepper, lemon, thyme. 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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