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Sauce

Port Wine Sauce

A sauce made with onion, butter, bouquet garni, stock, red currant jelly, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and port wine work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Port Wine Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the onion in butter with the bouquet garni.

  2. Add the stock, boil, and skim off any foam.

  3. Strain the mixture, then add the red currant jelly and port wine.

  4. Boil again and serve.

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 + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + red curranttop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together258 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Butter + red curranttop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together495 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that softens the onion and carries the flavour of the aromatics into the sauce.
Rich thick stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and supplies most of its body and savoury flavour.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a glossy body that rounds out the sharpness of the wine.
Port wine
Adds depth, acidity and fruity aroma that define the sauce's character.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam after the stock boils. Foam is coagulated proteins and impurities that can cloud the sauce and leave a scummy texture if not removed while the liquid is kept at a boil.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, red currant, port wine):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, red currant, port wine. 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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