Name: Meat Gravies and Sauces
Ingredients: Salt; Pepper; Leftover meat; Flour; Cold milk or water or broth; Boiling water

Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Meat Gravies and Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

Fry enough meat for your party, leaving some in the pan for gravy.
Gash or mince the leftover meat and cook it until the juice is extracted without scorching.
Discard the refuse meat and add a thickening made by mixing flour with cold milk, water, or broth until smooth.
Season with salt and pepper, then thin the gravy to your desired consistency with boiling water.

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.

Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Meat + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,703 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pepper + meattop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,777 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + milktop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together26,984 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Meat Croquettes52 recipes

Meatballs37 recipes

Mince Meat37 recipes

Meat Cakes35 recipes

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Meat Gravies and Sauces