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Sauce

Wine Sauce for Game

A sauce made from currant jelly, port wine, water, butter, salt, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and game wine, served with venison.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Wine Sauce for Game

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine currant jelly, port wine, water, cold butter, salt, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper in a saucepan.

  2. Simmer for a few minutes, then strain the mixture.

  3. Add the wine.

Finish and serve

  1. Optionally, stir in a few spoonfuls of gravy from the game.

  2. Serve with venison.

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

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

  2. Currant + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together356 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Port wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Currant jelly
Provides sweetness and body, and its pectin helps thicken the sauce as it simmers.
Port wine
Adds fruity depth and acidity that balances the sweetness of the jelly.
Cold butter
Added cold to enrich the sauce and give it a glossy, smooth finish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and cuts through the richness of the game.

The step that matters

Simmer gently, then strain. Simmering only a few minutes is enough to dissolve the jelly and concentrate flavour without reducing the sauce too far. Straining removes any solids so the sauce stays smooth and clear.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (port wine, butter, lemon, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, butter, lemon, pepper. 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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