Name: Currant Sauce
Ingredients: 5 pounds currants; 3 pounds sugar; 1 pint vinegar; 1 tablespoon cinnamon; 1 tablespoon cloves; 1 tablespoon allspice; 1 tablespoon pepper; 1 teaspoon salt

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Currant Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Combine currants, sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, pepper, and salt in a large pot.
Boil for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Bottle the sauce while hot.
If preferred, you can omit the vinegar.

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.

Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,395 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Currants: Provide the main fruit body and tart flavor of the sauce.
Sugar: Sweetens the sauce and helps thicken it as it cooks down.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the sweet fruit and balances the spices.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, clove, allspice, pepper):

Limefits better
Orangefits better
Lemonfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, clove, allspice, pepper. 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.