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Orange Gravy for Teal, Widgeons, Snipes, Woodcock, Etc
Put half a pint of veal gravy into a saucepan with an onion cut into small pieces, half a dozen leaves of basil, the rind of half a small Seville orange, and, if the flavour is liked, a little lemon-rind also. Simmer the gravy gently for ten or fifteen minutes. Strain it, and add to it the juice of the orange, half a tea-spoonful of salt, half a tea-spoonful of pepper, a pinch of cayenne, and a glassful of claret. Bring the sauce to the point of boiling, and serve very hot in a tureen. Probable cost, 8d., exclusive of the claret. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A bitter-orange sauce for wildfowl, essentially a Victorian household version of sauce bigarade. Nothing here is difficult; the variables are the orange, the gravy and the wine glass.
- Seville orange is the pointThe recipe depends on a bitter orange, sour and aromatic rather than sweet. Sevilles appear in shops only from roughly January to February; outside that window, the closest approximation is the juice of a sweet orange sharpened with lemon, plus a strip of sweet orange zest, accepting that the result is milder.
- Half a pintAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. Simmered ten to fifteen minutes it will reduce somewhat.
- Veal gravyNot a thickened gravy but the clear veal stock that underpinned many Victorian sauces. A good unsalted veal or brown chicken stock, reduced until it has body, does the same job. Since the recipe already calls for half a teaspoon of salt, start with unsalted stock.
- A glassful of claretClaret is dry red Bordeaux. A Victorian wine glass held roughly 2 to 2½ fl oz, not a modern 6 oz pour; more than that will swamp the sauce and leave it tasting raw.
- Bring to the point of boiling, no furtherThe recipe adds the wine and orange juice to the strained gravy and brings it only to the point of boiling. A hard boil drives off the fresh orange aroma and coarsens the claret.
- Season by taste, not by the half-teaspoonHalf a teaspoon each of salt and pepper into ten ounces of already-savoury stock is heavy by current standards, particularly if the stock has been reduced. Add half of each, then adjust.
- Strain, and strain properlyThe onion, basil and peel are flavouring only. Pass the gravy through a fine sieve or muslin before the wine goes in, or the finished sauce will not be clear enough to send to table in a tureen.
- Yield and serviceEnough for five or six as written, served hot in a warmed sauce boat alongside the birds rather than poured over them. It suits any roasted dark-fleshed bird, including duck breast.
Orange and wildfowl is one of the oldest pairings in European cookery, and this sauce is a plain domestic descendant of the French sauce bigarade, named for the bitter bigarade or Seville orange. Bitter oranges reached English kitchens in quantity as part of the Mediterranean trade that also supplied marmalade, and their sharpness was valued precisely because it cut the richness of fat-fleshed birds. Cassell's placing of the recipe under teal, widgeon, snipe and woodcock reflects a period when wildfowl were ordinary market game rather than a rarity, sold by the brace in city poulterers through the winter, which is conveniently the same season as the Seville orange. The costing of eightpence "exclusive of the claret" is characteristic of the book: Cassell's was written for middle-class households running to a cook, and it priced almost everything so a mistress could check the kitchen accounts.