Name: Common Gravy for Poultry or Game
Ingredients: ½ pint water; 1 small onion; 2 slices carrot (or 1 small carrot); ¼ teaspoon sugar; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'); ½ teaspoon Liebig Company’s Extract of Meat; ½ teaspoon corn flour

Why it works: Carrot and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 794 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Common Gravy for Poultry or Game

Ingredients

½ pint water
1 small onion
2 slices carrot (or 1 small carrot)
¼ teaspoon sugar
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt')
½ teaspoon Liebig Company’s Extract of Meat
½ teaspoon corn flour

Directions

Stew the neck, gizzard, pinion bones, and feet of the poultry or game in ½ pint of water with the onion, carrot, sugar, and salt for 1 hour.
Add ½ teaspoon of Liebig Company’s Extract of Meat.
Thicken slightly with ½ teaspoon of corn flour.

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.

Carrot + corntop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together794 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + corntop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,205 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,165 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,029 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn flour: Thickens the liquid into a gravy as it heats and binds slightly when cooled.
Liebig company’s extract of meat: Adds concentrated meaty savour to the stock.
Onion: Contributes savoury, aromatic flavour to the stewing liquid.
Carrot: Adds gentle sweetness and body to the stewing liquid.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, sugar, meat, corn, flour):

Parsnipfits better
Capsicumfits better
Sweet potatofits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, sugar, meat, corn, flour. 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.

Corn Fritters203 recipes

Carrot Soup134 recipes

Meat Croquettes52 recipes

Cream of Corn Soup50 recipes

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Common Gravy for Poultry or Game