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Sauce

Current Jelly Sauce

A sauce made from currant jelly, butter, water, cornstarch, orange juice, orange peel, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,125 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Current Jelly Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine currant jelly and butter in a saucepan and heat slowly until melted.

  2. Pour in boiling water.

  3. Moisten cornstarch with a little cold water and add to the mixture.

  4. Cook for 5 minutes.

  5. Stir in the orange juice, grated orange peel, and chopped almonds.

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. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Currant + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

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

  4. Currant + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Butter + orangetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 sweetness and fruity flavour, and sets the body of the sauce as it melts.
Cornstarch
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce when heated with it.
Orange juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour that balances the sweet jelly.
Grated orange peel
Adds aromatic oil for concentrated citrus fragrance without extra liquid.

The step that matters

Moisten cornstarch with a little cold water and add to the mixture. Cornstarch added dry or lumpy forms clumps that will not disperse. Mixing it into cold water first lets the granules separate, so they thicken evenly when heated.

Flavor stand-ins for the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, orange, almond):

  1. Figbetter flavor fit
  2. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  3. Peachbetter flavor fit
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, orange, almond. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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