Home › The Principles of Cookery › GERMAN SAUCE (for brawn, cold pickled Pork, or Boar's head)
GERMAN SAUCE (for brawn, cold pickled Pork, or Boar's head)
Dissolve a quarter of a pound of red currant jelly, and mix with it the juice, and thinly-shredded rind of a large orange, a heaped table-spoonful of scraped horse-radish, a table-spoonful of finely-sifted sugar, a dessert-spoonful of mixed mustard, two table-spoonfuls of vinegar, and four of salad-oil. Put the sauce in a cool place till wanted, and send to table in a tureen. Time, twenty minutes to prepare. Probable cost, 9d. Sufficient for half a pint of sauce.
A cold, uncooked sauce in the Cumberland family: sweet, sharp and hot at once, built on melted currant jelly rather than a cooked base. Nothing here is difficult, but the order in which things go together decides whether it looks like a sauce or a broken slick of oil.
- Melt the jelly, do not cook itA quarter pound of redcurrant jelly is about 6 tablespoons. Warm it just until fluid over low heat or in a bowl of hot water, then let it cool to room temperature before the oil goes in. If it is still hot the oil separates immediately.
- "Mixed mustard"This means mustard powder already made up into a paste with water, in the English manner, not a jar of prepared Dijon. A dessertspoon is about two teaspoons; if you use bottled mustard, start with slightly less, as modern pastes are wetter and more vinegary.
- Finely-sifted sugarCaster or superfine sugar. In a cold sauce granulated will sit on the tongue as grit, since there is no cooking step to dissolve it.
- HorseradishFreshly scraped root is what is intended, and it is much sharper than the creamed horseradish sold in jars. If using jarred grated horseradish, drain it; if using creamed, expect a milder, thicker sauce.
- Orange rindShred only the coloured zest in fine threads, no white pith. Blanching the threads for a minute in boiling water and draining them takes the raw bitterness off; the recipe does not ask for it, but it is common in modern versions of this sauce.
- Adding the oilWhisk the four tablespoons of oil in last, in a thin stream, into the cold jelly-and-vinegar mixture. It will never be a stable emulsion, so stir or shake it again before it reaches the table.
- Yield and servingHalf an imperial pint is about 10 fl oz, roughly 285 ml (not a US cup), enough for perhaps eight to ten as an accompaniment. Serve it cold, as directed, with cold brawn, ham, tongue, cold pork or game; it will keep several days covered in the refrigerator.
- CostThe 9d. quoted is Victorian retail pricing and is of historical interest only.
This is a version of what English cooks more often call Cumberland sauce, a cold sweet-sharp relish of redcurrant jelly, orange, mustard and vinegar served with cold pork, ham, brawn and game. The Cumberland name is traditionally linked to the Hanoverian dukes of Cumberland, though the attribution is not firmly documented and the name itself is not recorded early. The dishes it is offered with here explain its logic: brawn, cold pickled pork and boar's head are all fatty, salty and gelatinous, and they want acid, sugar and heat rather than a rich gravy. Boar's head was by this date largely a ceremonial Christmas centrepiece, and a dictionary of cookery like this one still catalogued the sauces that went with such set pieces.