Skip to main content
Sauce

Spiced Currants

A spiced sauce made from red currants, sugar, ginger, cloves, and cinnamon, boiled until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Spiced Currants

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine red currants, sugar, ground ginger, ground cloves, and cinnamon in a large pot.

  2. Boil the mixture for 2 hours or until it thickens.

  3. Serve as a sauce for cold meats.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Red currant + clovetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together128 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Red currants
Provide the tart fruit base and pectin that thicken the sauce as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the sauce as water evaporates.
Ground ginger
Adds warm, spicy aroma and pungent flavor to the sauce.
Ground cloves
Adds strong warm aroma and a pungent spice note.
Cinnamon
Adds sweet woody aroma and warm flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil until it thickens. Currants release pectin and water as they cook, and the sauce thickens only as liquid evaporates and sugar concentrates. Stopping too early leaves it runny, while cooking too long can scorch the sugar on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, ginger, clove, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, clove, cinnamon. 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.

You might also like

Currant Jelly SauceCurrant Jelly Sauce32 recipesGinger SauceGinger Sauce12 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipes