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Orange-gravy Sauce for Wild Ducks, Woodcocks, Snipes, Widgeon, and Teal

A sauce made from pale gravy, basil, onion, orange peel, Seville orange juice, salt, pepper, and red wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Basil and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,294 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Orange-gravy Sauce for Wild Ducks, Woodcocks, Snipes, Widgeon, and Teal

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the pale gravy, basil leaves, onion, and orange or lemon peel.

  2. Bring to a boil for a few minutes, then strain the mixture.

  3. Add the juice of the Seville orange or lemon, salt, pepper, and red wine to the clear gravy.

Serve

  1. 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.

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

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

  3. Orange + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Basil + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,600 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Pale gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the other flavours.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the finished sauce.
Seville orange or lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour that cuts through the gravy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (basil, orange, pepper, red wine):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against basil, orange, pepper, red wine. 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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