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Orange Gravy Sauce, for Game, and Wild Fowl

A clear orange‑flavored gravy made from veal broth, onion, basil, orange peel, Seville orange juice, salt, pepper, port, and optional cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Game, and Wild Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Prepare 1 pint of clear veal broth.

  2. Add 1 onion, 12 leaves of basil, and 1 large piece of orange or lemon peel.

  3. Boil slowly for 10 minutes.

  4. Strain the broth.

  5. Return the broth to the saucepan.

  6. Add the juice of 1 Seville orange or lemon.

  7. Stir in 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of pepper, and ⅓ cup of port.

  8. Add Cayenne pepper if desired.

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. Onion + basiltop 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 broth
Forms the liquid base that the sauce is built and reduced from.
Seville orange or lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour that balances the rich broth.
Port
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Orange or lemon peel
Infuses citrus aroma into the broth during simmering.

Swap the orange

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

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

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