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Dessert

Jelly Sauce

A sauce made from currant jelly, butter, corn starch, sherry wine, and boiling water, used over pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and sherry work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 393 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Jelly Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix corn starch with boiling water and stir until thickened.

  2. Add melted butter and let it cool slightly.

  3. Gradually beat in the currant jelly until smooth.

  4. Stir in the sherry wine and heat the mixture in a double boiler until very hot.

  5. Pour the sauce over the pudding.

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. Currant + sherrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Currant + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the sauce as it is cooked with hot water, giving it body.
Currant jelly
Provides sweetness, fruity flavor, and a glossy body to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, rounder mouthfeel.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth that balances the sweetness of the jelly.

The step that matters

Gradually beat in the currant jelly until smooth. Cold or lumpy jelly added all at once does not blend into the starch mixture and leaves lumps. Adding it gradually lets the jelly dissolve evenly and keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, corn, sherry, wine):

  1. Grapefits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, corn, sherry, wine. 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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