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Currant Sauce

A sweet and tart sauce made from currant jelly, butter, sugar, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Currant Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine currant jelly and boiling water.

  2. Add butter and sugar, stirring until melted.

  3. Dissolve corn starch in a little cold water and add to the mixture.

  4. Bring to a boil, then add lemon juice and nutmeg.

  5. Serve hot.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Corn + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 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

Currant jelly
Provides the main fruit flavor and sweetness, and its pectin helps thicken the sauce as it dissolves.
Corn starch
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, glossy sauce when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the currants and lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the fruit flavor and cuts the sweetness.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil after adding corn starch. Cornstarch only thickens fully when heated to a boil. Stirring it in cold water first prevents lumps, and boiling activates its thickening so the sauce sets properly.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, corn, lemon, nutmeg):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, corn, lemon, nutmeg. 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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