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Bed-Currant Jelly Sauce for Game

A sauce made with butter, onion, flour, celery, bay leaf, stock, and red currant jelly for game.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,518 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Bed-Currant Jelly Sauce for Game

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan and brown the onion.

  2. Add the flour, celery, and bay leaf; stir until browned.

  3. Pour in the stock and simmer for 20 minutes.

  4. Strain the sauce back into the pan and skim off the fat.

  5. Stir in the Red-Currant jelly over low heat until melted.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Flour + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 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
Enriches the base and carries flavour while the onion browns.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and stock.
Stock
Forms the liquid body of the sauce.
Red-currant jelly
Adds sweetness and tartness and gives the sauce its fruity flavour and gloss.

The step that matters

Stir in the jelly over low heat. Jelly contains pectin and sugar that can scorch on direct heat and cause the sauce to stick or taste burnt. Gentle heat lets it melt smoothly and keeps its fresh fruit flavour.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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