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Orange Gravy

A veal-based gravy flavored with orange rind, basil, and claret.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine veal gravy, chopped onion, basil leaves, Seville orange rind, and lemon rind if desired.

  2. Simmer gently for 10 to 15 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture and add the orange juice, salt, pepper, cayenne, and claret.

  4. Bring the sauce to a boil and serve very hot in a tureen.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Basil + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,823 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Basil + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Basil + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal gravy
Forms the savoury base of the sauce and supplies body and meaty flavour.
Seville orange juice
Adds sharp acidity and fruity aroma that balances the rich gravy.
Claret
Adds wine acidity and depth, rounding out the gravy and orange flavours.
Onion
Releases sweetness and aromatic flavour into the gravy during simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. Gentle simmering lets the onion, basil and orange rind flavour the gravy without boiling off liquid or turning bitter oils from the rind harsh. Boiling hard at this stage can make the sauce cloudy and over-reduced.

“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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