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Mandram Sauce
Mince two shallots or a middle-sized onion as finely as possible. Chop or slice a cucumber, and let the vegetables stand in water for a few minutes; then drain them dry. Sprinkle lightly with salt, and add the cucumber, a small pinch of cayenne, and part of a capsicum, sliced, with a table-spoonful of vinegar, and two of white wine. If the cucumber be sliced, the onion should be chopped, and vice versa. Time, five minutes to drain the cucumber.
An uncooked relish of cucumber, onion and chilli in vinegar and wine — closer to a Caribbean cucumber pickle than to a sauce in the French sense. It takes minutes and is best made shortly before serving.
- The text repeats itselfThe cucumber is listed twice: once chopped or sliced at the start, then again after the salt. Treat it as one cucumber, salted along with the onion.
- Capsicum means a chilliIn Victorian British usage capsicum is a hot pepper pod, not the sweet bell pepper of a modern supermarket. Half a fresh red chilli, seeded and thinly sliced, is in the right range alongside the pinch of cayenne.
- Wine and vinegarOne tablespoon vinegar to two of white wine — cider or white wine vinegar suits it. That is barely enough liquid to coat the vegetables, which is the point; this is a relish, not a dressing.
- The soaking stepStanding the onion and cucumber in water and then draining takes some of the edge off the raw onion. Drain them genuinely dry, as the recipe insists, or the sauce will be watery.
- Salt with a light handSalt draws liquid from cucumber quickly. Sprinkle lightly as directed and do not let it sit long before the vinegar and wine go in, or you will end up with a pool at the bottom of the bowl.
- Chop one, slice the otherThe recipe directs that the cucumber be sliced if the onion is chopped, and vice versa. No reason is given, though it does produce a contrast of textures.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield or serving direction; one cucumber makes a condiment quantity. Being uncooked and lightly acidulated, it is best eaten fresh.
Mandram is a Caribbean relish, generally traced to Barbados and carried into British cookery books through the colonial West Indies, where cucumber, onion, lime or vinegar and a hot pepper pod accompanied salt fish and cold meat. Some nineteenth-century writers described it as a digestive, and it appears in household manuals with the proportions drifting from one book to the next. Its presence in a Victorian British cookery book reflects how far imperial trade had carried hot peppers and their attendant recipes into the ordinary kitchen, even where the cook had no idea where the name came from.