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Sweet Sauce, or Gravy for Venison

A sweet sauce made with venison gravy, port wine, sugar, butter, shallots, ham, carrot, herbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Sweet Sauce, or Gravy for Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy base

  1. In a saucepan, combine the venison gravy, port wine or claret, and sugar. Stir until the sugar dissolves.

Make the Espagnole sauce

  1. For Espagnole sauce, melt the butter in a thick saucepan over moderate heat.

  2. Add the shallots, ham, carrot, bay leaf, parsley, thyme, cloves, mace, peppercorns, and parsley root. Stir and cook gently for 20 minutes.

  3. Gradually add 1 pint of strong veal stock or gravy, and simmer gently for 30 to 40 minutes.

Finish

  1. Strain the sauce and skim off the fat before serving.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Shallot + carrottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together803 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Port wine + shallottop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Venison + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together239 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Venison gravy
Forms the savoury base that gives the sauce its body.
Port wine or claret
Adds fruity depth and aroma as its flavour blends into the sauce.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness to balance the savoury and wine flavours.
Butter
Provides fat for richness and carries the flavour of the cooked aromatics.
Shallots
Softened slowly, they add mild sweetness and aromatic flavour.
Ham
Contributes cured, savoury meaty flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the shallots, ham and carrot gently in the butter. Over high heat the butter and vegetables can brown and turn bitter, which carries into the sauce. Gentle cooking softens the aromatics and builds sweet, rounded flavour.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, port wine, sugar, butter, shallot, ham, carrot):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, port wine, sugar, butter, shallot, ham, carrot. 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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