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Currant Jelly Sauce

A sweet sauce made from currant jelly, sugar, water, arrowroot, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Currant Jelly Sauce

Why it works: Currant and sherry work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 393 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Currant Jelly Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, mix sugar, currant jelly, and water.

  2. Bring to a boil and let it boil for seven minutes.

  3. Dilute arrowroot with cold water until it pours easily.

  4. Gradually add the arrowroot mixture to the boiling mixture.

  5. Let it boil for five minutes, then add Sherry wine.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Currant + sherrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Currant + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Arrowroot + sherrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together129 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  4. Sugar + arrowroottop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Arrowroot + winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together153 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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 fruit flavor and sweetness, and sets the sauce body as it melts and reduces.
Arrowroot
Thickens the sauce to a glossy, pourable consistency when heated.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the currants.
Sherry wine
Adds aromatic depth and a warm, nutty flavor to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the arrowroot mixture. Arrowroot must be fully diluted in cold water and stirred in gradually to the boiling liquid. Dumping it in clumps can leave lumps, and uneven thickening results when starch is not dispersed evenly.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, currant, sherry, wine):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Arrowrootthe original
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, currant, sherry, wine. 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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