Name: Currant-Sauce for a Pig
Ingredients: 1 ounce dried currants; ½ cup water; 1 small cup bread crumbs; a few cloves or a little grated nutmeg; ⅓ cup sweet wine; 1 tablespoon butter; sugar to taste

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Currant-Sauce for a Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the dried currants in water for a few minutes.
Add bread crumbs, cloves or nutmeg, sweet wine, and butter.
Sweeten to taste.
Serve in a sauce-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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,645 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Currant + winetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,323 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Currant + clovetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,038 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + winetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,958 recipes

Shared aroma: cis-isoeugenol (clove, spicy).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried currants: Provide the main fruit flavour and some sweetness as they soften in the water.
Bread crumbs: Thicken the sauce and give it body as they soak up the liquid.
Sweet wine: Adds sweetness and a fruity, aromatic note to the sauce.
Butter: Adds richness and a smoother, rounder mouthfeel to the sauce.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (currant, bread, wine, butter, sugar):

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegfits about as well
Thymefits about as well
Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against currant, bread, wine, butter, sugar. 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.