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Sauce

Sweet Sauce, for Venison

A sweet sauce made with red currant jelly, port or claret, venison gravy, and sugar, served with venison.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and venison work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Sweet Sauce, for Venison

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dissolve the red currant jelly in a bowl.

  2. Stir in the port or claret until combined; do not let it boil.

  3. In another bowl, dissolve the sugar in the venison gravy.

  4. Add the port or claret to the gravy mixture 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 + venisontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together81 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Venison + sugartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together186 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Red currant jelly
Adds fruity sweetness and tartness that balances the rich gravy.
Port or claret
Adds acidity and fruity depth that lifts the savoury gravy.
Venison gravy
Provides the savoury meat base and body of the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tartness of the jelly and wine.

The step that matters

Stir in the port or claret without boiling. Boiling drives off alcohol and delicate aromatics from the wine, flattening its fresh fruity flavour. Gentle stirring keeps the wine's aroma in the finished sauce.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Currantfits better
  2. Red currantthe original
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Pumpkinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, sugar. 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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