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Sauce

Jelly Sauce

A sauce made from brown sauce and currant jelly, served with game, lamb, or mutton.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Jelly Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Prepare a cup of brown sauce using butter, browned flour, and a little caramel.

  2. Heat the brown sauce until boiling hot.

  3. Stir in 4 to 5 teaspoons of currant jelly until well combined.

Serve

  1. Serve the jelly sauce with game, lamb, or mutton.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Sauce + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

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

Brown sauce
Provides a rich, savory base that the jelly is stirred into.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and tartness that balances the richness of the brown sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the jelly after heating the sauce. Jelly is mostly sugar and pectin. Once the sauce is boiling hot, stirring the jelly in until it dissolves gives a smooth, evenly flavored sauce rather than lumps of unmelted jelly.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, butter, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, butter, flour. 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.

More jelly sauce recipes

Currant 50Apple 5Fruit 3Game 3Ham with Currant 3Mutton with Currant 3 See all 26 →

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