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Red Currant Sauce
Put two tea-spoonfuls of red currant jelly into a small stewpan, with half a dozen cloves, a small stick of cinnamon, and the rind of an orange. Moisten with a little claret, strain off the liquor, and add the juice of the orange.
A tiny, concentrated sauce in the Victorian style, closer to a spiced glaze than a pouring sauce. Two points decide whether it works: how much claret you add, and how long you let the spices sit in it.
- The hinge: infuse, don't boilThe jelly needs only enough heat to melt and let the cloves, cinnamon and orange rind give up their oils. Held at a simmer it reduces to a sticky, over-clove-y syrup; keep it barely steaming for five to ten minutes, then strain.
- ClaretIn a British book of this date claret means red Bordeaux, or any dry, unoaked, moderately tannic red. "A little" is undefined; start with about 4 tablespoons (60 ml) to two teaspoons of jelly and add more if you want something spoonable rather than syrupy.
- The orange rindPare it in strips with a peeler, avoiding the white pith, which turns the sauce bitter over an infusion. Grated zest is harder to strain out and will cloud the finished sauce.
- Quantities are minuteAs written this yields a couple of tablespoons at most, enough to dress two plates. For six people multiply everything by three; the spices scale less than proportionally, so six to eight cloves and one cinnamon stick still suffice.
- StewpanA small, heavy saucepan. Stewpans of the period usually came with a lid and were used over gentle heat, which suits an infusion; cover it so the wine does not evaporate away.
- Order of operationsThe orange juice goes in after straining and off the heat, so its freshness survives. Add it a little at a time and taste, as oranges vary widely in acidity and the jelly is already sweet.
- What to serve it withVenison, hare, mutton and game birds, served warm rather than hot. It may thicken or partly set when chilled; reheat gently to loosen.
Red currant jelly with game is a long-established pairing in British cookery, the sharp, high-pectin fruit cutting the richness of venison and mutton long before the nineteenth century turned it into a rule. This version, with cloves, cinnamon, orange and red wine, sits in the same family as Cumberland sauce, which is generally traced to the mid-1800s and which uses port and orange and lemon in place of claret. Cassell's, published as a dictionary rather than a narrative cookbook, gives the formula in its barest form on the assumption that the cook already knows what it is for and how thin she wants it — a habit of the period that leaves modern readers guessing at quantities. The reliance on a jar of jelly rather than fresh fruit also marks the era: by the late Victorian decades, preserved red currant jelly was a standard store-cupboard item.