Name: Gravy for Boast Meat
Ingredients: Salt; Trimmings of venison; 3 or 4 mutton shank-bones; 1 quart of water; 2 teaspoons of walnut ketchup

Why it works: Venison and mutton work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 279 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Gravy for Boast Meat

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Place a dish under the meat with a small amount of salt about 15 minutes before removing it from the heat.
When the dish is full, take it away, baste the meat, and pour the gravy into the serving dish.

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.

Venison + muttontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together279 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Walnut + ketchuptop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together596 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Mutton + ketchuptop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together367 recipes

Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).
Mutton + walnuttop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together163 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).
Venison + walnuttop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together25 recipes

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