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Sauce

Old Sauce for Venison

A sauce made with red wine, powdered sugar, cinnamon, and bread, simmered and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Old Sauce for Venison

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Simmer red wine, powdered sugar, and cinnamon until thick, without boiling.

  2. Soften bread in water.

  3. Add softened bread to the sauce.

  4. Remove the cinnamon.

  5. Boil the mixture together.

  6. Alternatively, boil the bread with wine and spice until smooth.

  7. Add sugar after removing cinnamon.

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. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Red wine + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together250 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methyl-1-butanol (whiskey, malt).

  3. Cinnamon + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,705 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Red wine + cinnamontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together312 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Red wine + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together864 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Red wine
Provides the liquid base and acidity, and reduces as it simmers to build flavour and body.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the sauce thicken and turn glossy as it cooks down.
Bread
Its starch absorbs liquid and swells, giving the sauce body and thickening it.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and spice flavour to the wine.

The step that matters

Simmer without boiling. A gentle simmer lets the wine reduce and the sugar dissolve and thicken slowly. A hard boil can scorch the sugar, giving a bitter taste, and can reduce the sauce too fast.

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (red wine, sugar, bread):

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Clovefits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against red wine, sugar, bread. 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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