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Sauce

Jelly Sauce for Game

A sauce made with onion, butter, flour, bay leaves, vinegar or lemon juice, and currant jelly for game.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Jelly Sauce for Game

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the sliced onion in butter over medium heat until browned.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Add the bay leaves, vinegar or lemon juice, and currant jelly.

  4. Mix well and heat until the sauce is warmed through.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Vinegar + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Onion
Browning in butter builds savory, caramelized flavor as the base of the sauce.
Butter
Fat that carries the onion flavor and helps it brown.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and juices.
Currant jelly
Provides sweetness and body that melts into the sauce as it heats.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the jelly.

The step that matters

Browning the onion in butter. Onion browns slowly over medium heat; if it burns, it turns bitter and dark. Gentle, even browning gives the sauce its rich, deep flavor.

Flavor stand-ins for the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, flour, vinegar):

  1. Avocadobetter flavor fit
  2. Raisinbetter flavor fit
  3. Plumbetter flavor fit
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, vinegar. 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.

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