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Sauce

Cumberland Sauce

A sauce made with red currant jelly, Port wine, water, lemon rind, Harvey sauce, and cayenne pepper, served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cumberland Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine all ingredients in a saucepan.

  2. Strain the mixture and serve cold.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Red currant + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Red currant + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together267 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Red currant + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Port wine + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,804 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Red currant jelly
Provides the main sweetness and fruity body, and thickens the sauce as it sets when cooled.
Port wine
Adds depth and fruity wine flavour that balances the sweetness of the jelly.
Lemon rind
Contributes bright citrus aroma from its oils, lifting the flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture. Straining removes the lemon rind and any solids, so the sauce is smooth and clear rather than gritty or bitter.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, lemon, sauce, pepper. 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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