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Sauce

Old Sauce for Venison

A sweet and spiced sauce made from port wine, sugar, cinnamon, and bread crumbs, thickened into a jelly-like consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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. Combine the port wine, pounded sugar, and cinnamon stick in a saucepan.

  2. Simmer the mixture until it resembles jelly, avoiding actual boiling.

  3. Remove the cinnamon stick and boil briefly.

  4. Stir in the bread crumbs and boil together until thickened.

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. Port wine + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together321 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Port wine + cinnamontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Port wine + sugartop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together805 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Port wine
Provides the liquid base and fruity acidity that the sauce is built on.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps it thicken into a jelly-like consistency as it reduces.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and swell as they cook, thickening the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer until it resembles jelly, without boiling. Gentle simmering lets the sugar and wine reduce and concentrate slowly. A hard boil too early can scorch the sugar or cause the sauce to reduce unevenly before the crumbs are added.

“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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