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Gravy for General Use

A beef-based gravy flavored with cloves, peppercorns, mace, nutmeg, and sea salt, simmered for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Gravy for General Use

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine the floured beef, cloves, peppercorns, mace, nutmeg, salt, and water.

  2. Simmer gently for 2 hours, stirring frequently.

  3. Strain the mixture before using.

  4. Add a little browning for flavor.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Beef + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,495 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Beef + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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.
Browning
Adds deeper color and a richer, savory flavor to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 2 hours, stirring frequently. A gentle simmer extracts flavor from the beef and spices without boiling hard, which can make the liquid cloudy and cook the meat unevenly. Frequent stirring keeps the floured beef from sticking and scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, clove, nutmeg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove, nutmeg. 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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