Skip to main content
Sauce

Currant Sauce for Venison

A sauce made from boiled currants, bread crumbs, port wine, cloves, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Currant Sauce for Venison

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the dried currants in water until soft.

  2. Add the bread crumbs, port wine, cloves, and butter.

  3. Stir until the mixture is smooth.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Currant + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together356 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Port wine + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Port wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Bread + port winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together321 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried currants
Provide fruity sweetness and a slight tartness as the main flavour.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and thicken the sauce to a body that coats a spoon.
Port wine
Adds depth, sweetness and a rich aroma to the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel.
Cloves
Add a warm, spicy aroma.

The step that matters

Stir until the mixture is smooth. Bread crumbs absorb liquid and can clump into lumps if not stirred thoroughly, so continued stirring breaks them down and gives an even, smooth sauce.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (currant, bread, port wine, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against currant, bread, port wine, butter. 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 currant sauce recipes

for Venison 10Red 7Venison 3 See all 44 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCurrant Jelly SauceCurrant Jelly Sauce32 recipesBread SauceBread Sauce7 recipesWine Sauce for Sweet PuddingsWine Sauce for Sweet Puddings6 recipes