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Jelly Sauce
I glass currant or grape jelly 1 teaspoon salt 1 level teaspoon dry mustard
Turn the currant or grape jelly out into a deep plate and beat it to a foam. Then add dry mustard and salt and beat again thoroughly.
Dinner Pastries ENTRÉES AND MADE-OVER DISHES
A cold, uncooked relish sauce of three ingredients, meant for ham, cold lamb, venison or game birds. The whole thing succeeds or fails on how hard you beat the jelly.
- "1 glass" of jellyA glass here is a jelly tumbler of the period, commonly somewhere around 6 to 8 ounces, or roughly three-quarters of a cup once turned out. A modern half-pint jar of currant jelly is close enough to stand in.
- The hinge: beat it to a foamCurrant and grape jelly are firm pectin gels that break down under mechanical work into a light, opaque, spreadable froth. Use a fork or a whisk and keep at it for a couple of minutes; if you stop while it is still in glossy lumps the mustard will streak rather than disperse.
- Dry mustard"Dry mustard" is ground mustard powder, not prepared mustard from a jar. A level teaspoon of English-style powder is assertive; Colman's will read hotter than a milder ground yellow mustard. Add half, taste, then add the rest.
- Salt to jelly ratioA full teaspoon of salt in three-quarters of a cup of jelly is a lot by current taste, and period table salt was not necessarily as fine or as densely packing as modern free-flowing salt. Start with half a teaspoon.
- Let it restDry mustard needs roughly ten to fifteen minutes in contact with moisture for its pungency to develop, and that pungency fades on long standing. Mix it shortly before serving and let it stand briefly rather than making it the day before.
- Choice of jellyCurrant is the traditional partner for lamb and game because of its sharpness. Against a teaspoon of mustard, a tart red currant or crabapple jelly gives a better balance than a sweet commercial grape.
- Yield and servingAbout three-quarters of a cup. The recipe gives no serving direction; as an uncooked condiment it is best offered cold in a small bowl alongside the meat.
Sweet-tart fruit jelly served with roast meat is a long survival in English and American cookery, related to the older habit of pairing verjuice, currants and spice with mutton and game to cut richness. Currant jelly with lamb and venison was a fixed convention of the period, and this is essentially a dressed-up version of the plain jelly on the sideboard: mustard powder for heat, salt to keep it from reading as dessert, and vigorous beating to change the texture so nobody mistakes it for jam. A household that put up currants and grapes in summer would have had tumblers on hand for such uses.