Skip to main content
Sauce

Orange Gravy Sauce, for Wild Fowl

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine veal gravy, basil leaves, onion, and orange or lemon peel in a stewpan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil for a few minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Add the juice of the Seville orange or lemon, salt, pepper, and port wine to the strained liquid.

  5. If desired, add shallot and cayenne pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce separately for those who prefer wild fowl without it.

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

Veal gravy
Forms the savoury base of the sauce, giving it body and depth.
Seville orange or lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour that balances the richness of the gravy.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Orange or lemon peel
Contributes aromatic citrus oils that scent the sauce.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture. Straining removes the onion, basil, and peel solids so the sauce is smooth. Leaving them in would make it gritty and more bitter from the peel's oils.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, basil, onion, pepper, port wine):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, basil, onion, pepper, port 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.

More orange gravy recipes

Sauce 14for Wild Fowl 10 See all 11 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCold Orange SauceCold Orange Sauce11 recipesWine Sauce for Sweet PuddingsWine Sauce for Sweet Puddings6 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipes