Name: Currant Sauce
Ingredients: 1 ounce dried currants; ½ pint water; ½ cup bread crumbs; 6 cloves; ⅓ cup port wine

Why it works: Currant and port wine work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 356 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Currant Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the dried currants in water for a few minutes.
Add the bread crumbs, cloves, and port wine, and stir well.
Heat through before serving.

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.

Currant + port winetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together356 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + port winetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together914 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Bread + port winetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together321 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Currant + clovetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,038 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Currant + breadtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,398 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Dried currants: Soften in the boiling water and release their fruity sweetness and color into the sauce.
Bread crumbs: Absorb liquid and thicken the sauce to a smooth, spoonable body.
Port wine: Adds sweetness, depth and a fruity aroma to the sauce.