Jelly Sauce
1 tablespoon butter, 1 tumbler currant or grape jelly 1 tablespoon lemon juice Melt the jelly, adding the butter slowly. Boil for one minute and just before serving add the lemon. This is served with game, lamb or mutton.
A three-ingredient sauce that stands or falls on not overcooking the jelly. Melted currant jelly reduced too far turns sticky and candy-like as it cools.
- A tumblerJelly tumblers of the period generally ran about 6 to 8 fluid ounces, so read it as roughly a cup of jelly, or one small commercial jar; somewhere in the region of 10 to 12 oz by weight.
- The one-minute boilTake it literally. Currant and grape jelly are already at setting concentration; a longer boil drives off water and the sauce sets to a tacky glaze on the plate rather than pouring.
- Butter added slowlyThe instruction is doing emulsion work. Whisk the butter in in small pieces off the strongest heat so it disperses instead of separating into a slick on top.
- Lemon lastAdded off the heat, the juice keeps its brightness and cuts the sweetness. Boiled in, it mostly cooks flat and only contributes acid.
- Which jellyRed currant is the traditional choice and less aggressively sweet than most modern grape jelly. If using supermarket grape, expect to want the full tablespoon of lemon or a little more.
- YieldAbout one cup, enough for six to eight servings of lamb or game. Serve warm but not hot, in a small pitcher or sauceboat; it thickens noticeably as it cools.
- Strain if neededGrape jelly sometimes carries a skin or bits of pectin gel that will not melt smoothly. A quick pass through a fine sieve before the butter goes in fixes it.
Sweet-tart fruit sauces with strong meat are older than the jelly jar: medieval and early modern European cookery leaned on verjuice, vinegar and fruit to set against venison and mutton, and the pairing of red currant with game survived into the nineteenth century as the English standard, generally traced through Cumberland sauce and its relatives. By the time this book was compiled, currant and grape jelly in tumblers, whether home-put-up or shop-bought, was a familiar sight in American households, and a cook could produce something that read as a classic game sauce in three minutes with a jar, a spoonful of butter and a lemon. That convenience is largely why a recipe like this earns its place, in a period when mutton was still ordinary meat on an American table.