Name: Port Wine Sauce Eor Game
Ingredients: ½ cup port wine; ⅓ cup melted red currant jelly; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1 teaspoon lemon juice; ⅛ teaspoon cayenne pepper; 1 cup thick brown stock or good gravy

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Port Wine Sauce Eor Game

Ingredients

Directions

In an earthen vessel, combine port wine, melted red currant jelly, salt, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and thick brown stock.
Place the vessel on the fire and bring to a boil.
Once done, transfer to a sauce boat and 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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Port wine + red curranttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Red currant + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together267 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Red currant + lemontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together309 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Port wine + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,804 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Red currant jelly: Adds sweetness and body, and helps the sauce thicken and turn glossy as it reduces.
Port wine: Contributes depth, sweetness and aroma to the sauce's flavour.
Brown stock or gravy: Provides savoury body and moisture, forming the base of the sauce.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the sweet and rich flavours.

The step that matters

Bringing the sauce to a boil. Boiling the mixture thickens it and cooks off raw alcohol, while the jelly must be fully melted and blended first so it does not clump or leave lumps in the sauce.

Swap the red currant

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

Limefits better
Orangefits better
Figfits better
Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, lemon, 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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Port Wine Sauce Eor Game