Name: Short Directions Respecting Gravies
Ingredients: skirt of beef; ox kidney or milt; shank-end of mutton; shank bones of mutton; tarragon

Why it works: Beef and mutton are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,373 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Short Directions Respecting Gravies

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the skirt of beef, ox kidney, or shank-end of mutton into pieces.
Soak and clean the shank bones of mutton thoroughly.
Prepare the meat and bones as you would for any other gravy.
Add tarragon shortly before serving for enhanced 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.

Beef + muttontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,373 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Beef + tarragontop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together310 recipes

Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).
Mutton + tarragontop 35% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together42 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).