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Cumberland Sauce

A cold sauce made with shallots, citrus, mustard, port wine, ginger, red‑currant jelly, vinegar, and spices, served with game.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 859 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cumberland Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mince the shallots and place them in a saucepan with the thin rinds of the lemon and orange cut into fine strips.

  2. Add ½ cup of water and cook for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture and return it to the saucepan.

  4. Add the mustard, port wine, ground ginger, red‑currant jelly, and the juice of the lemon and orange.

  5. Stir in the vinegar and season with salt, pepper, and cayenne.

  6. Bring to a boil, strain again, and serve cold with game or ducks.

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. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Red-currant jelly
Provides sweetness and body, thickening the sauce as it sets when cold.
Port wine
Adds depth and a fruity, slightly sweet aroma to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the jelly and port.
Mustard
Contributes sharpness and a pungent flavour that cuts through the rich sweetness.
Shallots
Add a mild savoury onion flavour that forms the sauce's base.
Orange
Its rind and juice add fragrant citrus aroma and bright fruit flavour.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture before adding the liquids. Straining removes the shallot and rind solids so the sauce is smooth and clear; the final strain after boiling removes any remaining bits and fine rind.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, orange, lemon, mustard, port wine, ginger, vinegar):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, orange, lemon, mustard, port wine, ginger, vinegar. 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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