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Cumberland Sauce

A sauce made from red currant jelly, port wine, shallots, orange and lemon rinds, citrus juice, mustard, cayenne pepper, and powdered ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 859 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cumberland Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dissolve the red-currant jelly in a bowl.

  2. Add the port wine and finely chopped shallots.

  3. Mix in the orange rind and lemon rind.

  4. Stir in the juices of the orange and lemon.

  5. Add the mustard, cayenne pepper, and powdered ginger, then mix everything well.

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. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Red-currant jelly
Provides the main body, sweetness and gel-like thickness of the sauce.
Port wine
Adds depth and a fruity, slightly sweet flavour that rounds out the sauce.
Orange juice
Adds bright acidity and fruity sweetness that balances the rich jelly.
Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity that lifts the flavour and cuts the sweetness.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent bite that complements the fruit and wine.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (port wine, shallot, orange, lemon, mustard, pepper, ginger):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, shallot, orange, lemon, mustard, pepper, ginger. 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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