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Sauce

Sauce Chasseur

A reduction sauce made with brown sauce, red currant jelly, glaze, lemon juice, port wine, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and port wine work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Sauce Chasseur

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine all ingredients in a saucepan.

  2. Boil until reduced to 1 cup.

  3. Strain the sauce and serve.

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. Red currant + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Red currant + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Lemon + port winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Sauce + port winetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together424 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Good brown sauce
Forms the savory base and body of the sauce.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and tartness, and gives the sauce a glossy finish.
Port wine
Adds fruity depth and sweetness that concentrate as the sauce reduces.
Glaze
Adds body and shine, thickening the sauce as it reduces.
Lemon juice
Adds a little acidity to brighten the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Reducing the sauce to 1 cup. Boiling evaporates water and concentrates flavor and body. Reducing too far or too fast can make the sauce overly thick, intense, or salty, so it should be checked against the 1 cup target as it simmers.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raspberryfits better
  2. Currantfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, red currant, 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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