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Port Wine Sauce

A sauce made with butter, port wine, powdered sugar, stock, ham, vegetables, and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Port Wine Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the port butter

  1. Melt ½ cup of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add ⅓ cup of port wine.

  3. Sweeten with powdered sugar to taste.

  4. Boil gently for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Make the brown sauce

  1. Melt 2 ounces of butter in another saucepan over low heat.

  2. Add 2 ounces of flour.

  3. Stir until it turns a nice brown color.

  4. Gradually mix in 1 pint of stock, 1½ ounces of chopped ham, carrot, onion, celery, cloves, salt, and pepper.

  5. Stir until it begins to boil.

  6. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

  7. Remove the fat.

Finish the sauce

  1. Combine ½ pint of the sauce with ¼ cup of currant jelly.

  2. Heat until the jelly is dissolved.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Carries the flavour and browns with the flour to build a rich base.
Port wine
Adds depth and a sweet, fruity flavour to the sauce.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a glossy finish when dissolved into the sauce.
Stock
Provides the liquid that turns the roux into a sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the flour until it turns brown. Cooking the flour and butter together as a roux builds colour and nutty flavour, but scorching gives a bitter taste. Keep the heat low and stir constantly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, port wine, sugar, flour, ham, carrot, celery):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, port wine, sugar, flour, ham, carrot, celery. 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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