Name: Pork Gravy
Ingredients: broth from meat trimmings; 1 onion; toasted bread or dried flour; tea-cupful of cooking liquor (from boiled meat)

Why it works: Meat and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,924 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Pork Gravy

Ingredients

broth from meat trimmings
1 onion
toasted bread or dried flour
tea-cupful of cooking liquor (from boiled meat)

Directions

Make broth using meat trimmings and flavor with onion.
Thicken broth with toasted bread or dried flour.
Avoid letting gravy touch the pork rind to prevent sogginess.
Skim fat from the cooking liquor and use it as gravy for boiled meat.
Enhance flavor by adding sauce over the meat if familiar with guests' tastes.

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.

Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,924 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,676 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Bread + teatop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together383 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Meat + oniontop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,364 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Meat + teatop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together207 recipes

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