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Sauce

Currant Jelly Sauce

A sauce made by steeping cinnamon, cloves, sugar, lemon peel, and port wine, then mixing with 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: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Currant Jelly Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the cinnamon into bits.

  2. Add cloves, sugar, lemon peel, and port wine.

  3. Keep warm for ½ hour to steep.

Finish the sauce

  1. Strain into a double boiler containing the currant jelly.

  2. Let it come to a boil and serve very hot.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Port wine + curranttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together356 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Currant jelly
Provides the main body, sweetness and fruity flavour of the sauce.
Port wine
Adds acidity and depth, and helps the spices release their aroma while steeping.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the jelly and wine.

The step that matters

Let it come to a boil and serve very hot. Once the jelly is melted in, the sauce must be heated enough to fully dissolve and blend into a smooth, pourable texture. Serving it cooled would leave it thick and less evenly flavoured.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cinnamon, clove, sugar, lemon, port wine):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, clove, sugar, lemon, 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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