Name: Orange Gravy Sauce, for Wild Ducks, Widgeon, Teal, Fyc.
Ingredients: ½ pint veal gravy; 6 leaves basil; 1 small onion; 1 roll orange or lemon peel; juice of 1 Seville orange or lemon; ½ teaspoon salt; ½ teaspoon pepper; ⅓ cup red wine

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 Ducks, Widgeon, Teal, Fyc.

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

In a saucepan, combine veal gravy, basil leaves, onion, and orange or lemon peel.
Bring to a boil for a few minutes, then strain the mixture.
Add the juice of the Seville orange or lemon, salt, pepper, and red wine to the clear gravy.

Serve

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.

Basil + peppertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,294 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Basil + orangetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together265 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Orange + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,402 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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: Forms the base of the sauce and provides its body and savory flavor.
Orange or lemon peel: Adds aromatic citrus oils that flavor the gravy.
Seville orange or lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy.
Red wine: Adds depth and acidity to the sauce.
Basil: Adds a herbal aroma to the gravy.

Swap the orange

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

Lemonfits better
Limefits better
Plumfits better
Orangethe original

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