Name: Sauce for Venison
Ingredients: ½ pint mutton gravy; 1 large tablespoon currant jelly; 1 ounce powdered sugar; ¼ pint port or claret

Why it works: Currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes. The science ↓

Sauce for Venison

Ingredients

½ pint mutton gravy
1 large tablespoon currant jelly
1 ounce powdered sugar
¼ pint port or claret

Directions

Make the sauce

Stew any trimmings of the venison very gently in the mutton gravy for half an hour.
Strain the mixture and pour it into a saucepan.
Add the currant jelly, powdered sugar, and port or claret.
Simmer for five minutes.

Serve

Serve hot in a tureen.

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.

Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,256 recipes
Mutton + curranttop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together393 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Mutton + sugartop 34% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together726 recipes

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

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton gravy: Forms the savoury liquid base and carries the flavour of the venison trimmings.
Currant jelly: Adds sweetness and a fruity tartness that balances the rich gravy.
Powdered sugar: Dissolves easily to add sweetness without a grainy texture.
Port or claret: Adds depth, aroma and a little acidity to the sauce.