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Gravy for Wild Water Fowl

A savory gravy made with basil, onion, garlic, citrus peel, salt, pepper, mustard, port wine, and citrus juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Basil and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,823 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Gravy for Wild Water Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. In a saucepan, combine the gravy, basil, onion, garlic, and lemon or orange peel.

  2. Bring to a boil for a few minutes, then strain the mixture.

  3. Return the strained gravy to the heat and add salt, white pepper, cayenne, sugar, mustard, port wine, and citrus juice.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Basil + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,823 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Basil + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Basil + clovetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Port wine
Adds depth and a fruity sweetness to the gravy.
Gravy
Forms the liquid base that carries all the other flavours.
Citrus juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (basil, onion, clove, lemon, pepper, sugar, mustard):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against basil, onion, clove, lemon, pepper, sugar, mustard. 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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