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Game Sauce

A sauce made with game stock, ham, shallot, coconut, currant jelly, chutney, rice flour, port, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,063 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Game Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Sauté the ham and shallot in the butter for about 10 minutes.

  2. Add the rice flour, then gradually stir in the stock.

  3. Mix in the jelly, coconut, and chutney.

  4. Cook slowly for 15 minutes, then strain the sauce.

  5. Reheat and add the port before serving hot.

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. Coconut + ricetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Shallot + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Shallot + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together90 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the ham and shallot and adds richness to the sauce.
Rich game stock
Forms the liquid base that gives the sauce its main savoury body.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity note that balances the savoury stock.
Port
Adds a rounded, wine-based aroma and sweetness added just before serving.

The step that matters

Adding the rice flour and stock gradually. Pouring the stock in gradually while stirring keeps the flour fully dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps. Dumping the liquid in at once tends to trap dry clumps of starch that are hard to dissolve later.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, shallot, coconut, rice, flour, butter):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, shallot, coconut, rice, flour, butter. 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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