Name: Gravy for a Fold Without Meat
Ingredients: ½ pint water; 1 piece of toasted bread; pepper to taste; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 bit of thyme; ½ glass red wine; 1 piece of butter; 1 tablespoon flour

Why it works: Pepper and thyme are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Gravy for a Fold Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the neck, liver, and gizzard in water with toasted bread, pepper, salt, and thyme until reduced to ¼ pint.
Add red wine and boil again.
Bruise the liver well and strain the mixture.
Thicken the gravy with butter rolled in flour.

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.

Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,585 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Thyme + red winetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together749 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Thyme + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,721 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pepper, red wine, butter, flour):

Thymethe original
Parsleyfits about as well
Sagefits about as well
Clovefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, red wine, butter, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.