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Orange Gravy for Wild Fowl

A savory orange-infused gravy made with brown gravy, orange rind, lemon rind, sugar, port, lemon juice, and Seville orange juice, seasoned with cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Gravy for Wild Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the gravy with the orange rind, lemon rind, and sugar for about 10 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture and add the port or claret, lemon juice, and Seville orange juice.

  3. Season with cayenne and 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + hazelnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together205 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Orange + hazelnuttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together115 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Brown gravy or espagnole
Provides the rich savoury base that the citrus and wine are balanced against.
Seville orange rind
Adds bitter aromatic oils and fragrance that flavour the gravy as it simmers.
Port or claret
Adds wine depth and body, with its acidity and sweetness rounding the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy and sharpens the citrus flavour.
Seville orange juice
Adds tart, floral citrus flavour that gives the sauce its characteristic character.
Sugar
Softens the sharpness of the citrus and balances the acidity of the sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the gravy with the rind for about 10 minutes. Citrus rind releases bitter oils slowly; boiling too briefly leaves the flavour weak, while boiling too long can make the sauce taste harsh. Straining afterwards removes the rind so the sauce stays smooth.

Swap the hazelnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, lemon, sugar):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Hazelnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, lemon, sugar. 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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