Name: Cold Game Sauce
Ingredients: gravy from the roast; ½ cup browned and rolled breadcrumbs; 1 teaspoon port wine or sherry; 1 teaspoon orange juice (or lime juice with a pinch of sugar); 5 drops hot sauce; ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper or ¼ of a beaten chili; 1 teaspoon chutney or apricot jam (if not served with red currant jelly); ¼ teaspoon vinegar

Why it works: Orange and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 703 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Cold Game Sauce

Ingredients

gravy from the roast
½ cup browned and rolled breadcrumbs
1 teaspoon port wine or sherry
1 teaspoon orange juice (or lime juice with a pinch of sugar)
5 drops hot sauce
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper or ¼ of a beaten chili
1 teaspoon chutney or apricot jam (if not served with red currant jelly)
¼ teaspoon vinegar

Directions

Pour the gravy from the roast over the breadcrumbs.
Add the port wine or sherry.
Add the orange juice (or lime juice with a pinch of sugar).
Add the hot sauce.
Add the cayenne pepper (or a beaten chili).
If not serving with red currant jelly, mix in the chutney or apricot jam.
Stir well.
Add the vinegar.

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.

Orange + apricottop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together703 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Orange + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,402 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Port wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together598 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).
Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Apricot + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together217 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Gravy from the roast: Provides the meaty base and moisture that the breadcrumbs soak up.
Browned and rolled breadcrumbs: Thicken the liquid and give the sauce body.
Port wine or sherry: Adds depth and a mellow sweetness to the sauce.
Orange juice: Adds fruity acidity and brightness that balances the rich gravy.
Cayenne pepper: Adds a sharp, lingering heat.

Swap the apricot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (port wine, orange, sauce, pepper, vinegar):

Lemonfits better
Figfits better
Plumfits better
Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, orange, sauce, pepper, vinegar. 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.