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Orange Gravy Sauce, for Wild Fowl

A sauce made from veal gravy, basil, onion, orange peel, Seville orange juice, salt, pepper, port wine, and optional shalot and 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 Wild Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, combine veal gravy, basil leaves, small onion, and orange or lemon peel.

  2. Bring to a boil for a few minutes, then strain the mixture.

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

  4. If desired, mix in shalot and cayenne pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce alongside wild fowl.

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
Provides the rich, savoury base that the sauce is built on.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Seville orange or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens and balances the rich gravy.
Orange or lemon peel
Contributes aromatic citrus oils that scent the sauce.

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.

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