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Sauce

Wine Sauce for Venison or Hare

A sauce made with wine, mutton gravy, and sugar, boiled and served immediately.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Port wine and mutton work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 344 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Wine Sauce for Venison or Hare

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the wine and mutton gravy in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Serve immediately.

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. Port wine + muttontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together344 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Port wine + sugartop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together805 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Mutton + sugartop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together726 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Claret or port wine
Adds acidity and fruity depth that balances the rich flavour of the sauce.
Mutton gravy
Provides savoury body and meaty flavour to the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the acidity of the wine.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boil. Boiling concentrates the wine and gravy by evaporating some water, which deepens flavour and thickens the sauce slightly. Watch the pan so it does not reduce too far or scorch.

“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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