Name: An Excellent Relish After Dinner
Ingredients: soup or gravy from any dish; pepper to taste; ⅓ cup vinegar; ⅓ cup wine; ⅓ cup catsup; coarse sea salt to taste; legs, liver, and gizzard of a turkey (or other meat); kidney of veal (optional)

Why it works: Liver and veal match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 392 recipes. Both carry enoic acid, which smells butter, cheesy. The science ↓

An Excellent Relish After Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

Pour soup or gravy into a stew dish.
Add pepper, vinegar, wine, catsup, and coarse sea salt; season well.

Prepare the meat

Broil the turkey legs, liver, gizzard, and kidney of veal until cooked.
Cut the broiled meat into small pieces.

Combine and serve

Add the meat to the gravy and stew it at the table.

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.

Liver + vealtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together392 recipes

Shared aroma: enoic acid (butter, cheesy).
Vinegar + winetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,493 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + winetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,066 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Wine + vealtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together698 recipes

Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey legs, liver, and gizzard: Provide the main meat, which becomes tender and savory when stewed in the gravy.
Soup or gravy: Supplies moisture and body, forming the base that the meat stews in.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the meat.
Catsup: Contributes sweetness and tomato acidity to the sauce.
Wine: Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the sauce.

“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.