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Gravy for a Pig

A gravy made by boiling pig liver, lights, and pettitoes with onion, then seasoning with catsup, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Gravy for a Pig

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the liver, lights, and pettitoes in a small quantity of water with the onion.

  2. Drain the water after cooking and mix the remaining liquid with a little catsup.

  3. Thicken the mixture with butter and flour to create the gravy.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Liver + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,420 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Liver + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps build a smooth, silky body with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as it heats with the butter.
Catsup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the savory cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked into the butter and liquid so starch can swell and thicken evenly. Adding it raw or in clumps leaves lumps and a pasty texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, butter, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, butter, 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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