Skip to main content
Sauce

Cherry Sauce

A sauce made from cherries, claret, cloves, stale bread, and sugar, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,129 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Cherry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Simmer the cherry stones and kernels in enough water to cover for 15 minutes.

  2. Strain out the kernels and add the cherries, claret, cloves, stale bread, and sugar to the water.

  3. Stir in 1 pint of water and cook gently for 30 minutes.

  4. Press the mixture through a sieve and boil again until moderately thick.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with roast pork or game.

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. Clove + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,129 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Bread + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Clove and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe cherries
Their flesh and juice form the body and fruity flavour of the sauce.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour that balances the sweetness of the cherries.
Stale bread
Its starch helps thicken the sauce as it cooks and is pressed through a sieve.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tartness of the cherries and wine.

The step that matters

Pressing and reboiling until moderately thick. Pressing removes solids so the sauce is smooth, and reboiling evaporates water and concentrates the sauce. Boiling too briefly leaves it thin, while overcooking can make it too thick.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, 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.

More cherry sauce recipes

German 3 See all 34 →

You might also like

Bread SauceBread Sauce7 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes