Skip to main content
Main

Cuheaht Jelly Sauce

A sauce made with butter, onion, bay leaf, celery, vinegar, currant jelly, flour, stock, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cuheaht Jelly Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and cook the chopped onion until it begins to color.

  2. Add the flour, bay leaf, and celery, stirring until brown.

  3. Pour in the stock and simmer for 20 minutes.

Finish the sauce

  1. Strain the mixture and skim off all the fat.

  2. Add the currant jelly and stir over low heat until melted.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity flavor, and thickens the sauce as it melts.
Flour
Thickens the stock and butter mixture into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Butter
Carries the onion and flour, adding richness and flavor to the sauce base.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the currant jelly.

The step that matters

Stir the flour until brown. Browning the flour in butter builds nutty, deeper flavor, but it can scorch quickly over heat. Constant stirring keeps it even and prevents bitter, burnt notes in the sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, celery, vinegar, flour, pepper):

  1. Lemonbetter flavor fit
  2. Limebetter flavor fit
  3. Avocadobetter flavor fit
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, celery, vinegar, flour, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipes