Name: Brown Sauce
Ingredients: Gravy; Butter; Mushroom Catsup (optional); Juice of ½ Lemon; Thinly pared lemon rind; 1 tablespoon Port or Claret; Cayenne Pepper to taste; Basil or Tarragon Vinegar (optional)

Why it works: Lemon and basil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,823 recipes mention both. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the gravy well with a little of the Gravy.
Stir in the remainder gradually.
Set over low heat and let it simmer for 15-20 minutes.
Skim off the fat as it rises.
When thickened to the consistency of cream, strain through a fine sieve.
For added flavor, pound the liver with butter and stir it into the sauce.
For a ragout or game, add mushroom catsup, lemon juice, wine, and cayenne pepper.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Lemon + basiltop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,823 recipes

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

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Pepper + basiltop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together5,294 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the basil

The recipe marks basil as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, mushroom, lemon, pepper):

Thymebetter flavor fit
Parsleybetter flavor fit
Marjorambetter flavor fit
Basilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mushroom, lemon, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).