Name: Venison Gravy
Ingredients: 5 pounds coarse beef; 1½ pints port wine; 1 nutmeg; 2 teaspoons powdered cloves; ½ pound butter; sugar to taste; browned flour to thicken; salt to taste

Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Venison Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the beef for 5 to 6 hours.
Add 3 quarts of the beef broth to a pot.
Stir in the port wine, nutmeg, cloves, butter, and sugar.
Thicken with browned flour as desired.
Strain the mixture before serving.

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.

Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Port wine + clovetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together914 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Port wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,499 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, port wine, nutmeg, butter, sugar, flour):

Cinnamonfits better
Clovethe original
Allspicefits about as well
Cardamomfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, port wine, nutmeg, butter, sugar, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.