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Pig, Sucking, Currant Sauce for

A sauce made from butter, flour, mushrooms, parsley, stock, sherry, egg yolks, and lemon juice, served over roast pig.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pig, Sucking, Currant Sauce for

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the cold roast pig pieces with pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and mix in the flour.

  2. Add the sliced mushrooms and parsley, then moisten with stock and sherry.

  3. Simmer the sauce gently until it thickens to a cream-like consistency, then strain it.

  4. Add the meat to the sauce and heat without boiling.

  5. Stir in the beaten egg yolks mixed with lemon juice for one minute.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat on a hot dish with the sauce poured over it.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and enrich it, giving a silky, custard-like body when gently heated.
Flour
Forms a roux with the butter that thickens the stock and sherry into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Carries the flour into a roux and adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Stock
Provides the liquid base that the roux thickens into the sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy savoury flavour and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks without boiling. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat. If the sauce boils or gets too hot, the proteins scramble and the sauce turns grainy or curdled, so add the yolks off the heat or at very low heat and stir constantly.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, flour, mushroom, parsley, sherry, egg):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, flour, mushroom, parsley, sherry, egg. 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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