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Sauce

Current Jelly Sauce

A sauce made from currant jelly, butter, water, cornstarch, orange juice, peel, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,125 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Current Jelly Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine currant jelly and butter, then heat and melt slowly.

  2. Pour in boiling water.

  3. Moisten cornstarch with a little cold water, add to the mixture, and cook for 5 minutes.

  4. Stir in the juice and grated peel of the orange, and the chopped almonds.

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. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Currant + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Currant + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Butter + orangetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Currant jelly
Provides the main sweetness and fruity body, and sets the sauce's flavor base.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells and gelatinizes when the liquid is heated.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the sauce.
Orange juice
Adds acidity and brightness that balance the sweetness of the jelly.
Blanched almonds
Add a nutty flavor and a slight crunch to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the cornstarch. Cornstarch added directly to hot liquid clumps, so it must first be moistened in cold water. Once the mixture is hot, the starch granules swell and thicken the sauce, so it needs to cook long enough to thicken fully.

Flavor stand-ins for the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, orange, almond):

  1. Figbetter flavor fit
  2. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  3. Peachbetter flavor fit
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, orange, almond. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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