Name: Hare, Wine Sauce for
Ingredients: 3 tablespoons good unflavoured gravy; 3 tablespoons claret; 1 tablespoon red currant jelly; 2 cloves; a tiny piece of stick cinnamon

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

Hare, Wine Sauce for

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

In a saucepan, combine the gravy and claret.
Heat the mixture over medium heat.
Stir in the red currant jelly until melted.
For added flavor, boil the cloves and cinnamon in the sauce for a few minutes, then strain them out.

Serve

Serve the sauce 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Red currant + clovetop 11% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together128 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).
Red currant + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together93 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Red currant jelly: Adds sweetness and body, and helps the sauce taste rounded.
Claret: Adds acidity and wine flavour that deepens the sauce.
Gravy: Provides the savoury base and meaty richness of the sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the red currant

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

Quincebetter flavor fit
Vanillabetter flavor fit
Orangebetter flavor fit
Red currantthe original

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