Name: Venison Sauce
Ingredients: 1 pound brown sugar; 1½ cups currant jelly; 1 pint claret wine (or tomato ketchup); 2 tablespoons ground mace; 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon; 1 pound butter

Why it works: Mace and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Venison Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Combine brown sugar, currant jelly, claret wine (or tomato ketchup), ground mace, ground cinnamon, and butter in a pot.
Boil the mixture together until well combined.

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.

Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Currant + macetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,791 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,645 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Wine + cinnamontop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,170 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Brown sugar: Adds sweetness and helps give the sauce a rich, caramel-like depth.
Currant jelly: Provides sweetness, body and a fruity tang that sets the sauce's character.
Claret wine: Adds acidity and fruity depth, and thins the sauce as it reduces.
Butter: Adds fat, richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, currant, wine, cinnamon, butter):

Nutmegfits better
Clovefits better
Allspicefits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, currant, wine, cinnamon, butter. 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.