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Sauce

Red Currant Sauce

A sauce made with butter, flour, red currant jelly, onion, and water, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and pepper work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 267 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Red Currant Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the sliced onion in the water until soft.

  2. Add the red currant jelly.

  3. Blend the butter and flour smoothly.

  4. Strain the jelly and onion mixture into the butter and flour blend.

  5. Bring to a boil and season with salt and pepper.

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. Red currant + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together267 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and smooth body once blended with flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when blended with butter and heated.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity tartness to the sauce.
Onion
Contributes savoury depth and body as it softens in the water.

The step that matters

Blend the butter and flour smoothly. Cooking flour and butter together into a smooth paste before adding liquid prevents lumps, because starch granules must be coated with fat to disperse evenly when the liquid is added.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

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