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Sauce

Red Currant or Raspberry Sauce

A sauce made from red currants and optional raspberries, sweetened with sugar and thickened with arrow-root.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,156 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Red Currant or Raspberry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and drain the currants if dusty.

Make the sauce

  1. Make a syrup by boiling the sugar and water together for 5 minutes.

  2. Add the currants to the syrup and stew for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain the juice through a fine sieve or muslin.

  4. Heat the juice again and mix it with the arrow-root dissolved in cold water, stirring briskly.

  5. Boil the mixture for 1 minute until transparent.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the pudding to cover it completely or serve in a tureen.

  2. If using raspberries, add them to the syrup 2-3 minutes after the currants.

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. Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Red currants
Provide the sharp, tart flavour and the main body of the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and balances the tartness of the currants.
Arrow-root
Thickens the strained juice as it heats, making it glossy and clear.

The step that matters

Stirring the arrow-root into the hot juice. Stirring briskly as the starch is added spreads it evenly so it does not form lumps. The mixture must then be boiled briefly so the starch thickens fully and turns transparent.

“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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