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Sauce for Wild Fowl
INGREDIENTS for sauce for 2 birds-1 glass of port wine, 1 tablespoonful of Leamington sauce, 1 tablespoonful of mushroom ketchup, 1 tablespoonful of lemon-juice, 1 slice of lemon-peel, 1 large shalot cut in slices, 1 blade of mace, cayenne to taste. AVERAGE COST, Ed.
Put all the ingredients into a stewpan, set it over the fire, and let it simmer for about 5 minutes; then strain, and serve the sauce in a tureen.
TIME.-5 minutes.
A thin, sharp pouring sauce for roast wild duck, teal or widgeon, built on port and bottled table sauces. It takes five minutes and is meant to be made while the birds rest.
- A glass of portVictorian recipes reckon a wine glass at roughly 2 to 2 1/2 fl oz, not a modern stemmed glass, so about 1/4 cup of ruby or tawny port for two birds is a reasonable reading.
- Leamington sauceA proprietary Victorian bottled table sauce, no longer to be found; its exact composition is not recorded. Worcestershire sauce is the usual modern stand-in, measure for measure.
- Mushroom ketchupNot tomato ketchup but a thin, dark, salty mushroom extract still sold by a few British makers. Failing that, a spoonful of mushroom soy or a strong mushroom reduction gives the same savoury depth.
- ShalotSimply a shallot, and "large" here means a single fat one rather than a modern banana shallot's worth. It is strained out, so slice it thickly.
- Blade of maceOne flake of the dried aril of nutmeg, not ground mace. If you only have ground, use a scant pinch, since it will not be strained out cleanly.
- Keep it at a bare simmerThe point of the five minutes is to soften the raw edge of the port and draw out the shallot and mace. A hard boil drives off the wine's aroma and concentrates the salt in the bottled sauces.
- CayenneThe recipe puts it in with everything else, but you may prefer to hold it back and add it at the end, off the heat, to taste. No salt is called for; the bottled sauces carry it.
- Yield and servingAround 3 fl oz once strained, enough to spoon over two birds. Serve hot in a warmed jug or sauceboat; it is a thin gravy, not a coating sauce, and will not thicken.
Wild duck, teal and widgeon were common on Victorian tables in autumn and winter, and because their flesh is lean, dark and strongly flavoured, the standard accompaniment was an acid, spirituous sauce rather than a butter or flour one: port, lemon and cayenne to cut the richness of the fat and answer the gaminess. Two sauces appear here, mushroom ketchup and Leamington sauce. The mushroom ketchup is the older element by far; English cooks were making and bottling it at home well before the nineteenth century, long before tomato ketchup displaced the word.