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Game Sauce

A sauce made from bread, salt, nutmeg, claret, orange juice, butter, flour, and optional celery, cream, butter, mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Game Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Grate half of a loaf of bread, removing the crusts.

  2. Add salt and nutmeg to the bread.

  3. Mix in claret and orange juice.

Finish with the fowls

  1. When the fowls are half roasted, melt butter in a pan.

  2. Knead flour into the melted butter, then add the bread mixture.

  3. Place the sauce under the fowls with the gravy from the pan.

Celery variation

  1. For celery sauce, boil chopped celery until tender, then add cream, butter, flour, and season with mace and nutmeg.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Nutmeg + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Nutmeg + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Grated bread thickens the sauce and gives it body as it soaks up the liquids.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour that balances the richness of the butter.
Orange juice
Contributes acidity and bright fruit flavour to the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Kneaded into the melted butter to help thicken the sauce.

The step that matters

Kneading flour into the melted butter. Flour must be worked evenly into the fat before the bread mixture goes in; if it clumps or is added without cooking, the sauce can taste pasty and stay lumpy.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, nutmeg, orange, butter, flour, cream, mace):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, nutmeg, orange, butter, flour, cream, mace. 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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