Name: Brown Sauce
Ingredients: 1 pint gravy or stock; 1 carrot; 1 oz. butter or dripping; 1 dessertspoon vinegar; 1 onion; 1 dessertspoon mushroom ketchup; Salt and pepper

Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 14,555 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Peel the onion and scrape the carrot.
Cut both into small pieces.
Melt the butter or dripping in a saucepan over medium heat.
Add the vegetables and flour, stirring until brown.
Add the vinegar, ketchup, and gravy, stirring until it boils.
Skim well and simmer for twenty minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Carrot + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together2,796 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together10,626 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, vinegar, onion, mushroom, ketchup, pepper):

Capsicumbetter flavor fit
Shallotbetter flavor fit
Mustardabout as good a flavor fit
Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar, onion, mushroom, ketchup, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).