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Sauce

Currant Sauce for Venison or Pig

A sauce made from currants, bread crumbs, butter, cloves, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Currant Sauce for Venison or Pig

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Clean the currants and boil them in water for a few minutes.

  2. Pour the boiled currants over the bread crumbs and let it soak.

  3. Add the butter rolled in flour, cloves, and port wine.

  4. Beat the mixture slightly and stir it over the heat until smooth.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Currant + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together356 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + port winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Bread + port winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together321 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Currants
Provide the main fruity flavour and tartness that defines the sauce.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the liquid and thicken the sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the sauce.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring over heat until smooth. Flour-coated butter and soaked bread crumbs can clump if heated unevenly. Gentle, constant stirring over heat lets the starch thicken evenly and the butter emulsify into a smooth sauce.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (currant, bread, butter, port wine):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against currant, bread, butter, port wine. 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.

More currant sauce recipes

for Venison 10Red 7Venison 3 See all 44 →

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