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Currant Sauce
3 ozs. (3 tablespoonfuls) I oz. (I heaping tablespooncurrants ful) butter 1 tablespoonful fine bread 1 wineglassful port wine crumbs I blade mace 4 cloves Wash the currants and put them with the other ingredients into a fireproof dish, cook gently for twenty minutes, stirring till smooth, and serve in an earthenware sauce boat. The cloves and mace should be tied in muslin or cheesecloth and removed before the sauce is served.
This sauce is good served with venison.
The ingredient list has come through the scanner interleaved and out of order; read it as 3 oz (3 tablespoons) currants, 1 tablespoon fine breadcrumbs, 1 blade mace, 4 cloves, 1 oz (1 heaping tablespoon) butter, and 1 wineglass of port. It is a small, concentrated sauce for game, not a pourable gravy.
- The currants are driedThe currants are almost certainly dried -- most likely dried Zante currants, the small black raisins, rather than fresh redcurrants, though the recipe does not say so outright. Washing them, as directed, also plumps them slightly, which matters when there is so little liquid in the pan.
- A wineglassfulIn books of this period a wineglass is about 2 fl oz, roughly a quarter cup. That is genuinely scant for twenty minutes of cooking, so keep a little water or stock at hand and add it a spoonful at a time as the currants swell.
- Keep it below a simmerThis is the hinge. With that much sugar from the fruit and only a few ounces of liquid, anything above a bare tremble will scorch on the bottom of the pan before the currants soften. Low heat, frequent stirring.
- Fireproof dishA dish that will take direct heat: flameproof earthenware or an enamelled casserole. Any small heavy saucepan does the same job.
- Breadcrumbs as the thickenerFine dry crumbs, not fresh soft ones, and they should be stirred in early so they have time to dissolve. They give the sauce body without the floury note of a roux; if it tightens too much, loosen it with water rather than more port.
- Blade maceA blade is one piece of the dried lacy covering of the nutmeg, sold as whole mace. About a quarter teaspoon of ground mace is a reasonable substitute, but it cannot be strained out, so add it sparingly at the end.
- Bag the spicesThe instruction to tie the mace and cloves in muslin is worth following. Whole cloves are easy to lose in a small quantity of dark sauce, and biting into one is unpleasant.
- YieldPerhaps half a cup of finished sauce, a small accompaniment to venison rather than a pourable gravy, thick enough to be spooned. Serve it warm; with butter and crumbs in it, it will stiffen as it cools.
Sweet fruit-and-spice sauces for game are among the oldest surviving strands of English cookery, and this one resembles medieval practice: dried fruit, wine, whole warm spices, and breadcrumbs to bind, a technique that predates flour-thickened sauces. Currant sauce was long served with venison and other dark game, sharing the shelf with Cumberland sauce and redcurrant jelly.