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Wild Fowl, Sauces For
No. 1. Mix the juice of half a lemon with a glassful of port or claret, three shallots sliced, a table-spoonful of Harvey's sauce, and a pinch of cayenne. Stir the sauce over the fire for five minutes, and strain it into a tureen: serve very hot. No. 2. Put into a tureen a tea-spoonful of essence of anchovies, a tea-spoonful of mixed mustard, a table-spoonful of ketchup, a glassful of claret, and a pinch of cayenne; mix thoroughly, and serve. No. 3. Slice three shallots, and put them into a small saucepan with two table-spoonfuls of clear gravy, two table-spoonfuls of vinegar, and six peppercorns. Simmer the liquor till it is strong and good, strain it, add a little salt, and serve hot or cold. No. 4. Put a tea-cupful of gravy into a saucepan with a shallot or small onion finely minced, an inch of thin lemon-rind, a table-spoonful of lemon-juice, and a pinch of cayenne. Simmer for ten minutes, strain the gravy, add a wine-glassful of port or claret, and serve very hot. A table-spoonful of Harvey's sauce or of mushroom ketchup may be added if approved. (See also ORANGE SAUCE FOR DUCKS AND WILD FOWL.)
Four sauces for roast duck, teal, widgeon or snipe, all built on the same Victorian trio of wine, shallot and a bottled savoury condiment. Two are simmered, two are essentially stirred together cold, and the chief risk in all of them is over-reduction into something harsh.
- A glassfulA wine-glass in Victorian recipe books is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz (60 ml), not a modern 6 oz pour. No. 4 calls for "a wine-glassful", and the four are probably intended alike.
- Harvey's sauceA commercial Victorian condiment of anchovy, soy, vinegar, garlic, cayenne and walnut ketchup, now off the market. A tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce covers the same ground, since it descends from the same family of anchovy-and-vinegar bottled sauces.
- Ketchup means mushroomIn No. 2 and No. 4, ketchup is mushroom or walnut ketchup, a thin dark savoury liquid, not tomato. Tomato ketchup's sugar will unbalance these sauces; use mushroom ketchup, or a teaspoon of soy plus a little of the mushroom soaking liquor.
- Essence of anchoviesA strained anchovy extract sold in bottles. Anchovy paste, or a teaspoon of colatura di alici, gives the same salty depth. Cut back on added salt accordingly.
- Clear gravyNot thickened pan gravy but a strong unthickened brown stock or jus, ideally made from the bird's giblets and trimmings. Anything flour-bound will turn cloudy and dull the point of the sauce, which is sharpness.
- Keep No. 1 briefFive minutes over the fire is enough to take the raw edge off the wine and soften the shallot without cooking away the acidity. Reduced further, the lemon and cayenne concentrate into something aggressive.
- No. 2 is uncookedNothing is heated, so its balance depends entirely on the wine. Use a claret you would drink; a thin or oxidised bottle has nothing to hide behind here.
- StrainingAll the shallot-based versions are strained. The sliced shallot is a flavouring, not a garnish, and the sauces are meant to be thin and clear enough to pool around carved meat rather than coat it.
- YieldNos. 1 and 3 make only a few tablespoons; No. 4, with its teacupful of gravy plus wine, makes closer to a cupful. Serve in a warmed tureen or sauceboat; these sauces cool very fast in a cold vessel.
Wild duck, teal and widgeon are strongly flavoured and were roasted rare in Victorian kitchens. The answer was acid and pungency \, wine, lemon, vinegar, shallot, cayenne \, rather than the fruit-and-sugar sauces given to domestic goose. Harvey's sauce, which appears twice here, was one of the most widely used bottled condiments of nineteenth-century Britain, generally traced to a late eighteenth-century London recipe and sold in tall narrow bottles well into the Edwardian period; its disappearance is arguably one reason these instructions now read as unfamiliar. The four numbered variants also show how a Victorian household cook was expected to work: not from one authorised recipe but from a short menu of interchangeable formulas, chosen by what the store cupboard happened to hold.