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Dessert

Currant Sauce

Currant sauce is a sweet syrup made from red currants, sugar, raisins, orange, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Currant Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine all ingredients in a kettle.

  2. Simmer until it forms a syrup.

  3. Boil for 40 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with cold meats or fowl.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Red currant + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Red currant + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Red currants
Provide tart acidity and natural pectin that helps the sauce thicken and set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, thickens the mixture into a syrup, and helps preserve the sauce.
Raisins
Add sweetness and body, giving the sauce a richer, thicker texture.
Orange
Adds citrus acidity and aroma to balance the sugar.
Lemon
Adds sharp acidity and bright aroma that balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Simmer until it forms a syrup. Sugar concentrates as water evaporates, and the pectin in the currants gels as the mixture thickens. Stopping too early leaves a runny sauce, while overcooking can scorch the sugar and make it too stiff once cooled.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (red currant, sugar, orange, lemon):

  1. Raspberryfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cranberryfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against red currant, sugar, orange, lemon. 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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