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Gravy to Make Mutton Eat Like Venison

A savory gravy made from woodcock, garlic, butter, onion, vinegar, pepper, flour, cullis, and lemon, simmered with unseasoned meat gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Gravy to Make Mutton Eat Like Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the woodcock

  1. Remove the bag from the entrails of the woodcock and cut it into pieces.

  2. Simmer the pieces with enough unseasoned meat gravy.

Make the gravy

  1. In a stewpan, rub the bottom with garlic.

  2. Add butter, onion slices, gravy, vinegar, and whole pepper; let it boil down.

  3. Thicken with a little flour and cullis, then strain through a tamis cloth.

  4. Squeeze in the lemon juice.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Woodcock
Provides the main meat and flavour that the gravy is built around.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the gravy coats the back of a spoon.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished gravy.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the meat and butter.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity and fresh aroma at the end.

The step that matters

Letting the gravy boil down. Reducing concentrates the flavour of the meat, gravy and seasonings. Boiling too hard or too long can make it salty and sticky, while stopping too early leaves it thin and weak in flavour.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, garlic, butter, onion, vinegar, pepper, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, garlic, butter, onion, vinegar, pepper, 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.

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