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Sauce

Jelly Sauce for Venison, Etc

A sauce made with butter, currant jelly, wine, and seasonings for venison.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,324 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Jelly Sauce for Venison, Etc

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the currant jelly and stir until melted.

  3. Pour in the wine and bring to a boil, then serve.

  4. For a lighter version, combine jelly, butter, and boiling water in a saucepan.

  5. Bring to a boil, then stir in corn starch blended with a few drops of cold water.

  6. Add cayenne and salt, boil for 3 minutes, then add wine to taste and bring to a boil 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. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Currant + peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Currant jelly
Provides sweetness and fruity flavor, and its pectin helps thicken the sauce as it melts and cools.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the sauce.
Port or madeira
Adds depth and acidity that balances the sweetness of the jelly.
Corn starch
Thickens the sauce when heated with liquid, giving it body.

The step that matters

Stirring in the corn starch. Corn starch must be blended with cold water first and added to a boiling liquid, otherwise it clumps and does not thicken evenly. Boiling it briefly then fully activates its thickening power.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, corn, pepper. 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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