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Sauce

Orange Sauce, for Wild Fowl or Game

A sauce made from gravy, onion, orange rind and juice, sugar, mustard, cayenne, and port wine, strained and served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Orange Sauce, for Wild Fowl or Game

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the gravy, onion, orange rind, orange juice, sugar, mustard, Cayenne, and port wine.

  2. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain the sauce, ensuring not to press the onion, to keep it thin.

Serve

  1. Serve hot in a tureen.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  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. Orange + mustardtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together541 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Gravy or espagnole
Forms the savoury base that the sauce is built on.
Seville orange juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour that cuts the richness of game.
Seville orange rind
Contributes aromatic oils and a bitter citrus note to the sauce.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth, rounding out the savoury and sharp flavours.

The step that matters

Strain without pressing the onion. Pressing the onion forces starch and fine solids through the strainer, which thickens the sauce and makes it cloudy. Letting the liquid drain naturally keeps it thin and clear.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, sugar, mustard, pepper, port wine):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar, mustard, 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.

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