Name: Brown Chestnut Sauce
Ingredients: rich brown gravy or veal stock; cooked chestnuts; Espagnole sauce or highly flavored gravy

Why it works: Chestnut and sauce work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 255 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Brown Chestnut Sauce

Ingredients

rich brown gravy or veal stock
cooked chestnuts
Espagnole sauce or highly flavored gravy

Directions

Substitute rich brown gravy for veal stock.
Omit the lemon seasoning.
Pass the cooked chestnuts through a sieve.
Mix the sieved chestnuts with Espagnole sauce or highly flavored 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.

Chestnut + saucetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together255 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Veal + chestnuttop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together175 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Veal + saucetop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,072 recipes

Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).