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Boar's Head Sauce
Take the rind of two oranges, and slice it. Rub two or three lumps of sugar on two more oranges, put the sugar into a basin with six or seven table-spoonfuls of red currant jelly, a little white pepper, one shallot, one spoonful of mixed mustard, and enough port wine to make the sauce as thick as good cream; add the orange-rind slices, which should be cut very thin, and bottle for use. This sauce is useful for nearly every kind of cold meat. Probable cost, 1s. 6d.
An uncooked cold-meat condiment of the Cumberland sauce family, assembled in a bowl and bottled. The only real technique in it is getting the orange oil into the sugar and the jelly smooth.
- Rubbing sugar on orangesThis is oleo-saccharum: dragging a sugar lump across the peel until it turns orange draws the aromatic oil out of the skin. Two or three lumps is roughly 2-3 teaspoons of sugar; if you use granulated instead, work about a tablespoon of finely grated zest into it with your fingers and let it sit ten minutes.
- The rind slicesPare the zest from the first two oranges with a peeler, taking no white pith, then shred it into threads as fine as you can. Cassell's says "very thin" because thick strips read as bitter and chewy in a sauce that is never cooked. Many cooks blanch the threads a minute in boiling water and refresh them; the original does not, and raw zest gives a sharper result.
- Mixed mustardIn this period "mixed mustard" means English mustard powder already slaked with water, not a French or wholegrain jar. A spoonful of made English mustard is the closest equivalent; Dijon will work but is milder and vinegary.
- The shallotMince it as finely as possible, or grate it. Left in coarse pieces it stays raw and hot in a sauce that has no heat to soften it. Some cooks steep the minced shallot in a spoonful of the port for ten minutes first.
- Smoothing the jellySix or seven tablespoons of red currant jelly is roughly 120-140 g. Set jelly will not whisk smooth cold; warm it gently until it slackens, then let it cool before adding the port.
- How much portThe recipe gives no quantity, only a target consistency of "good cream" - pourable but coating. Expect somewhere around 4 to 6 tablespoons with jelly of that volume; add it a spoonful at a time, since jellies vary a great deal in stiffness.
- Bottling and keeping"Bottle for use" here means a clean jar in a cold larder, not a preserve. Nothing in it is cooked or sealed, so keep it refrigerated and use it within two or three weeks; the raw shallot is the first thing to turn.
- Yield and servingMakes roughly 1 to 1 1/4 cups, enough for eight to ten servings. Cassell's says only that it is 'useful for nearly every kind of cold meat'; spoon it beside the meat rather than over it.
The name points at the boar's head, the ceremonial Christmas dish of English colleges and great houses, carried in whole with an orange or apple in its jaws - a custom still kept up annually at Queen's College, Oxford. Sauces of this type, red currant jelly sharpened with port, mustard, shallot and orange, were common in Victorian kitchens with cold game and cured meat, and much the same formula is generally known now as Cumberland sauce, a name of uncertain origin that appears in print only in the later nineteenth century and is linked, on traditional rather than documented grounds, to a Duke of Cumberland. Cassell's places it among cold sauces to be made in quantity and bottled, which tells you something about the Victorian sideboard: a household that put out cold joints day after day wanted a jar of something ready that would make yesterday's ham worth eating again. The "probable cost, 1s. 6d." is the dictionary's habitual note for the mistress budgeting a week's table.