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Sauce

Pieyven’s Sauce for Game, or Orange Gravy

A sauce made with claret, brown gravy, pepper, salt, cayenne, and orange juice, simmered and served over game.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,402 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Pieyven’s Sauce for Game, or Orange Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Bring the brown gravy to a boil.

  2. Add the claret, pepper, salt, cayenne, and orange juice.

  3. Let the mixture simmer for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour some sauce over the game and serve the rest hot in a sauceboat.

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. Pepper + orangetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour that cuts the richness of the gravy and game.
Brown gravy
Forms the savoury base of the sauce and supplies most of its body.
Seville oranges
Provide bright citrus acidity and aroma that balance the rich, savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after adding the claret and juice. Simmering only a few minutes lets the alcohol cook off and the flavours blend without over-reducing the sauce. Boiling hard can make a sharp citrus and wine taste harsh and concentrate the salt too quickly.

“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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