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Sauce

Currant Sauce for Venison

A sauce made from dried currants, bread crumbs, butter, salt, pepper, cloves, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Currant Sauce for Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Pick over and wash the currants.

  2. Boil the currants in hot water for 15 minutes.

  3. Add bread crumbs, butter, salt, pepper, and cloves to the currants.

  4. Boil the sauce gently.

Finish

  1. Just before serving, stir in the port wine.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Clove + port winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried currants
Soften and release sweetness and tart fruit flavour into the hot water to form the sauce base.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and thicken the sauce, giving it body.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, rounder mouthfeel and richer flavour.
Port wine
Adds fruity depth and aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Just before serving, stir in the port wine. Port is added last because prolonged boiling drives off its alcohol and delicate aromatic compounds, leaving the sauce flatter and less fragrant.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, pepper, clove, port wine):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, pepper, clove, port wine. 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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