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Sauce

Sauce Cumberland.

A cold sauce made with shallots, citrus, wine, mustard, and currant jelly, served with game or duck.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 859 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Sauce Cumberland.

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine minced shallots, lemon juice, lemon rind, orange rind, and water in a stewpan.

  2. Cook for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture and return the liquid to the stewpan.

  4. Add mixed mustard, Marsala wine, port wine, ground ginger, red currant jelly, lemon juice, orange juice, and vinegar.

  5. Season with pepper, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  6. Bring the sauce to a boil.

  7. Strain the sauce again.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce cold with game or duck.

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. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  3. Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body, balancing the sharp citrus and vinegar.
Lemon juice
Provides acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances the sweetness.
Port wine
Adds depth and a sweet, fruity richness to the sauce.
Marsala wine
Adds a rich, slightly sweet, fortified-wine flavour to the sauce.
Shallots
Contribute a mild, savoury aromatic base as they cook in the liquid.

The step that matters

Straining after the first cook. Straining removes the minced shallot and citrus rind so the sauce is smooth. Rind left in would make it bitter and gritty, and the second strain removes any remaining fine particles.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, lemon, orange, wine, port wine, ginger, red currant):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, lemon, orange, wine, port wine, ginger, red currant. 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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