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Sauce

Cumberland Sauce

A sweet and savory sauce made with red currant jelly, fruit rinds, vinegar, and various sauces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Cumberland Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the red currant jelly, water, vinegar, and fruit rinds.

  2. Simmer for 5 minutes until the jelly is completely dissolved.

  3. Add the sauces and strain the mixture into a basin.

Bottle and store

  1. Once cold, bottle and cork tightly, then store in a cool place.

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

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

  2. Red currant + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together124 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Red currant + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together188 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Lemon + vinegartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Red currant jelly
Provides the sweetness and set base that gives the sauce its body.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury depth and acidity to balance the sweet jelly.
Harvey's sauce
Contributes a strong, savoury, tangy flavour to the sauce.
Best french vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Dissolving the jelly fully before adding the sauces. Simmering until the jelly is completely dissolved ensures a smooth, evenly sweetened sauce. Undissolved jelly leaves lumps and uneven texture, and adding the sauces to a partly set mixture can make the flavour unbalanced.

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, lemon, sauce, vinegar):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, lemon, sauce, 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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