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The Old Currant Sauce for Venxson

A sauce made from currants, bread, butter, cloves, and port wine, boiled and served hot with venison.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

The Old Currant Sauce for Venxson

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil currants in water for a few minutes.

  2. Add grated bread, butter, cloves, and port wine.

  3. Stir until it boils.

  4. 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Walnut + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Clove + port winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Currants
Soften in water and release fruity sweetness and tartness into the sauce.
Grated bread
Thickens the sauce by absorbing liquid and giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the sauce.
Port wine
Adds sweetness, depth and aroma that complement the venison.

The step that matters

Stir until it boils. Bread thickens as its starch absorbs liquid and swells once heated, so the sauce needs to reach a boil and be stirred to keep it smooth and evenly thickened rather than lumpy or scorched on the bottom.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

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