How to pick the right sauce for your roast dinner

However succulent your centrepiece, what will make each mouthful absolutely worthwhile is the sauce with which you serve it. Each cut of meat has its steadfast sidekick – mint sauce with lamb, apple sauce with pork, horseradish with beef, cranberry with turkey and gravy with, well, anything – but things need not be set in stone. The whole point of a condiment is to enhance the flavour and texture of the main event, and there are so many ways of doing that: it’s possibly where the culinary endeavour is at its most creative. Here are a few subsitutes for those trad, shop-bought jars ...

With pork, you want sweetness combined with something tart to cut through the richness of the meat. Fruit ketchups have, since medieval times, been used to this end, and rhubarb is a particularly inspired choice, bringing a pop of pink to your plate. Richard Turner in his book Hog (Mitchell Beazley) has an excellent recipe for a rhubarb ketchup that combines the pink stems of forced rhubarb with cider vinegar, sugar, fresh ginger, cloves, cinnamon, orange juice and seasoning (see picture, far left).

Much like pork, turkey flesh also sits comfortably with a fruity sharpness. Why not switch your all-American cranberry sauce for a freshly foraged hedgerow jelly? Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall makes his with blackberries, rosehips, haws, sloes, elderberries or rowan berries and an equal measure of crab or cooking apples, to ensure a good set.

If it’s beef you’re having, you’ll want nose-tingling piquancy. Try switching your trad horseradish for wasabi mayonnaise. Darina Allen adds a flourish of parsley as well, for extra freshness.

While most often used as a dip for crudités or a toast topping, a tub of anchoïade will serve a roast handsomely. Turner, in Hog, pairs it with slow-roast pork, but it would do your roast lamb just as proud – lamb and anchovy are, after all, an enduring combo. Follow Clotilde Dusoulier’s simple recipe for this Provençale paste, which combines the anchovies with garlic, red wine vinegar and olive oil.

And lastly, in place of (or, frankly, as well as) the onion gravy – without which most roasts would quite simply be lost – keep your vegetarian tablemates happy with a boat of beurre blanc. This French butter sauce can be a little tricky to make, but Jamie Oliver gives an easy method using a shallot, some dry white wine and white wine vinegar, and a whole lot of butter.