Skip to main content
Sauce

Currant Jelly Sauce

A sauce made by melting currant jelly, infusing with port wine, lemon, cloves, and cinnamon, then straining and cooling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Currant Jelly Sauce

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Currant Jelly Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

  1. Melt the currant jelly in a saucepan.

  2. Infuse port wine or claret, lemon juice and rind, cloves, and cinnamon into the melted jelly.

  3. Let the mixture steep for 15 minutes.

Finish

  1. Strain the mixture into the currant jelly and stir well.

  2. Set aside to cool.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Currant + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together356 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Port wine + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Currant jelly
Provides the base sweetness and body, and sets as the sauce cools.
Port wine or claret
Adds depth and fruity aroma to the sauce.
Lemon juice and rind
Adds acidity to balance the sweetness, plus bright citrus aroma from the rind.
Cloves
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, sweet aroma.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (port wine, lemon, clove, cinnamon):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, lemon, clove, cinnamon. 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.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesHot Lemon Cream SauceHot Lemon Cream Sauce11 recipesWine Sauce for Sweet PuddingsWine Sauce for Sweet Puddings6 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipes