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Venison Sauce

A savory sauce made with onion, ham, butter, vinegar, peppercorns, bay leaf, carrot, thyme, parsley, Espagnole sauce, port wine, and red currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Venison Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, fry the minced onion and ham in butter until softened.

  2. Add vinegar, peppercorns, bay leaf, carrot, thyme, and parsley.

  3. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes.

  4. Stir in the Espagnole sauce, port wine, and red currant jelly.

  5. Cook for an additional 10 minutes, then skim and strain the sauce.

Serve

  1. Reheat, season to taste, and serve.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Espagnole sauce
Forms the sauce base, providing body and a rich, savory flavor.
Butter
Carries the onion and ham flavors and adds richness to the sauce.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavor to the sauce.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity tang that balances the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens and brightens the flavors of the sauce.
Onion
Provides aromatic sweetness and savory base flavor when softened in butter.

The step that matters

Skim and strain the sauce. Skimming removes fat and loose impurities that would make the sauce greasy or cloudy, and straining removes the solid vegetables and aromatics for a smooth texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, butter, vinegar, carrot, thyme, parsley, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, vinegar, carrot, thyme, parsley, sauce. 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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