Name: Bhown Chestnut Sauce
Ingredients: rich brown gravy or veal stock; chestnuts; parsley; water

Why it works: Chestnut and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 313 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Bhown Chestnut Sauce

Ingredients

rich brown gravy or veal stock
chestnuts
parsley
water

Directions

Substitute rich brown gravy for veal stock.
Mix chestnuts with a few spoonfuls of gravy after passing them through a sieve.
Gather young parsley, strip it from the stalks, and wash it thoroughly.
Shake the parsley dry in a cloth, then pound it in a mortar.
Press the juice from the parsley through a fine sieve into a clean jar.
Set the jar in a pan of boiling water for about three minutes to poach the juice.
Drain the juice on a clean sieve and it will be ready for use.

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.

Chestnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together313 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Veal + parsleytop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,766 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Veal + chestnuttop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together175 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).