Name: Orange Gravy, for Wild Fowl
Ingredients: ½ pint rich brown gravy (espagnole); ½ orange rind, pared thin; 1 small strip lemon rind; 1 hazelnut-sized piece of sugar; ¼ pint port or claret; juice of ½ lemon; 1 tablespoon orange juice; cayenne pepper to taste

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, for Wild Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the brown gravy with the orange rind, lemon rind, and sugar for about 10 minutes.
Strain the mixture and add the port or claret, lemon juice, and orange juice.
Season with cayenne pepper and serve hot.

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.

Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Orange + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,402 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Lemon + hazelnuttop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together205 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Orange + hazelnuttop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together115 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

Brown gravy (espagnole): Forms the savoury base that the other flavourings are added to.
Port or claret: Adds wine acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Orange rind: Contributes citrus aroma and bitter oils to the gravy.
Sugar: Adds a little sweetness to balance the acidity of the citrus and wine.

Swap the hazelnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, lemon, sugar, pepper):

Chickpeafits better
Almondfits better
Pistachiofits better
Hazelnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, lemon, sugar, pepper. 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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Orange Gravy, for Wild Fowl