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Venison with Jelly Sauce

A venison dish simmered in a sauce of currant jelly, butter, and port wine, thickened with cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and port wine work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 356 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Venison with Jelly Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a chafing dish, combine equal quantities of currant jelly, butter, and port wine or claret.

  2. Melt the jelly over low heat, then add salt and pepper generously.

Finish and serve

  1. Add slices of cold, underdone venison to the dish and turn them to coat.

  2. Mix cornstarch with a little wine and add it when the meat is hot and the sauce is boiling.

  3. Stir and boil for about 2 minutes, then serve.

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. Currant + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together356 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Currant + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Port wine + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,804 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Currant jelly
Provides sweetness and fruity acidity that balances the rich meat and butter.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, glossy mouthfeel.
Port wine or claret
Thins the sauce and adds depth and acidity to the fruit flavour.
Cornstarch
Thickens the boiling sauce so it clings to the slices of venison.

The step that matters

Adding the cornstarch slurry. Cornstarch thickens only when the liquid reaches a boil and is held there briefly. Adding it to a sauce that is not yet boiling, or stopping too early, leaves it thin, while overcooking can weaken its thickening power.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, port wine, pepper):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, port wine, 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.

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