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Sauce

Game Sauce

A sauce made from grated bread, salt, nutmeg, claret, orange juice, butter, flour, celery, cream, mace, and nutmeg for game fowls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Game Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread sauce

  1. Grate the bread and combine it with salt and nutmeg.

  2. Add claret and orange juice to the mixture.

Finish the sauce

  1. When the fowls are half roasted, melt butter in a pan and knead in flour. Shake the mixture while it melts, then pour it over the fowls with the gravy.

  2. For celery sauce, boil celery bits until tender, then add cream, butter rolled in flour, mace, and nutmeg.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Nutmeg + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Nutmeg + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Grated bread thickens the sauce and gives it a soft, body-rich texture.
Butter
Melted butter adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Kneaded into butter, flour thickens the sauce and keeps it from being greasy.
Claret
Wine adds acidity and aromatic depth to the bread sauce.
Orange juice
Juice adds acidity and bright flavour that balances the richness.
Cream
Cream adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the celery sauce.

The step that matters

Knead the flour into the butter before melting. Kneading flour into butter forms a paste that melts smoothly into the sauce. If the flour is added loose or the butter is too hot, it clumps and the sauce turns lumpy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, nutmeg, orange, butter, flour, celery, cream):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, nutmeg, orange, butter, flour, celery, cream. 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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