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Sauce

Curkant Jelly Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, onion, celery, bay leaf, vinegar, flour, stock, and currant jelly, served with game.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Curkant Jelly Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat and add the chopped onion.

  2. Cook until the onion begins to color.

  3. Stir in the flour, bay leaf, and celery; cook until browned.

  4. Add the stock and simmer for 20 minutes.

  5. Strain the mixture and skim off any fat.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the strained sauce to the pan, add the currant jelly, and stir over low heat until melted.

  2. Serve with game.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the onion brown gently.
Flour
Thickens the sauce and helps it hold together as it cooks.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity flavor, and sets the sauce's gloss as it melts in.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the jelly.
Onion
Builds savory depth as it browns in the butter.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and cook until browned. Flour must be cooked in the fat long enough to lose its raw taste and thicken properly, but browning too far can make the sauce bitter and dark.

Flavor stand-ins for the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, celery, vinegar, flour, pepper):

  1. Lemonbetter flavor fit
  2. Limebetter flavor fit
  3. Avocadobetter flavor fit
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, celery, vinegar, flour, pepper. 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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