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Sauce

Currant Jelly Sauce

A sauce made with butter, onion, flour, celery leaf, stock, and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Currant Jelly Sauce

Why it works: Onion and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,518 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Currant Jelly Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and fry the onion until light brown.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook until slightly browned.

  3. Add the celery leaf and stock, then simmer for 20 minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture, reheat, and add the currant jelly, stirring until dissolved.

  5. Serve warm.

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. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Flour + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the onion brown in the pan.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and stock.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity flavour, and gives the sauce its character.
Onion
Adds savoury depth as it browns in the butter.

The step that matters

Stirring the currant jelly in until dissolved. Add the jelly to a hot, strained sauce and stir until it fully melts. Undissolved jelly leaves lumps and uneven sweetness, and it can scorch if the sauce is left to boil on the heat.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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