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Winged Game, Sauce For
Take a quarter of a pint of the gravy which runs from the birds, put it into a saucepan, with a clove of garlic, a few peppercorns, a dessert-spoonful of lemon-juice, a tea-spoonful of salad-oil, and the thin rind of a quarter of a Seville orange cut into strips. Boil the gravy till it is pleasantly flavoured, skim and strain it, add a glassful of wine, and salt to taste, and serve. Time to boil the gravy, about a quarter of an hour. Sufficient for six or seven persons.
A carving-dish sauce built on the juices that collect under roasting game birds, sharpened with bitter orange and wine. It stands or falls on the quality of those juices.
- The hinge: the gravy"The gravy which runs from the birds" means the juices in the roasting tin and on the carving board, fat skimmed off. Grouse, partridge and pheasant rarely yield a full quarter-pint between them, so make up the difference with a strong unsalted game or brown chicken stock rather than diluting with water.
- Quarter of a pintAn imperial measure: 5 fl oz, or about two-thirds of a US cup. The wine is given only as "a glassful"; a wineglassful was conventionally reckoned at roughly 2 fl oz.
- Seville orangeThe bitter marmalade orange, in British shops only from late December to February. Its rind is far more aromatic and less sweet than a dessert orange. Out of season, use the pared rind of half a regular orange with an extra squeeze of lemon to restore the edge.
- Salad oilNineteenth-century shorthand for olive oil, generally a mild one rather than the peppery extra virgin sold now. A teaspoon is there for body and gloss, not flavour.
- The wineUnspecified, as period books often leave it. Port, madeira or a robust claret all suit game; add it at the end as directed, off a rolling boil, so it does not cook down to nothing.
- Fifteen minutes of boilingThat is a genuine reduction, not a warming through. The volume will drop and any salt already in the juices will concentrate; salt is added at the end, to taste. Skim persistently: game fat is assertive.
- Strain everythingThe garlic clove, peppercorns and rind strips are flavourings, not garnish. They go in whole and come out at the straining stage.
- YieldSix or seven servings from roughly 5 fl oz means a tablespoon or two apiece, spooned over the carved bird. This is a sharp accent sauce, not a pool of gravy.
"Winged game" is the older butcher's and cook's distinction between feathered game — grouse, partridge, pheasant, woodcock, snipe — and ground or furred game such as hare and rabbit. The pairing of bitter orange with roast fowl is long established in European cookery and is generally traced to the French sauce bigarade, named for the bitter bigarade or Seville orange; Seville oranges were familiar in English kitchens through the marmalade trade. What marks this as a Victorian household sauce rather than a restaurant one is its thrift: no roux, no stock pot reduced for hours, simply the juices already in the tin, seasoned, boiled down and lifted with wine while the bird rests.