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Sauce

Curr.4.nt Sauce for Venison or Pig

A sauce made from currants, water, 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 ↓

Curr.4.nt 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, cloves, and port wine to the mixture.

  4. Beat it a little and stir over the fire 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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Tea + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together181 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Currants
Provide the main fruit flavour and tartness that give the sauce its character.
Bread-crumbs
Soak up liquid and thicken the sauce into a smooth, body-rich texture.
Butter
Adds fat for a rounder mouthfeel and a glossy finish to the sauce.
Port wine
Adds depth, sweetness and aroma that complement the richness of venison.

The step that matters

Stir over the fire until smooth. Heat must be gentle and constant while stirring, because the crumbs and butter can scorch or lump if the sauce boils hard or sits still. Stirring keeps the starch and fat evenly dispersed, producing a smooth, cohesive sauce.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tea, bread, butter, flour, clove, 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.

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