Jelly Sauce
Turn a glass of currant or grape jelly out upon a deep plate, and beat it to a foam. Then add one level teaspoon of dry mustard and one saltspoon of salt, and beat again thoroughly.
A cold, uncooked sauce of three ingredients, meant to be spooned beside roast meat rather than poured over it. The whole thing depends on how much air you can beat into the jelly.
- A glass of jellyJelly was sold and stored in tumblers of roughly 6 to 8 ounces, so this means somewhere around a cup. A standard modern jar of currant or grape jelly is close enough.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. With a full teaspoon of dry mustard, that is a distinctly savory, sharp sauce, not a sweet one.
- Dry mustardThis is mustard powder, not prepared mustard from a jar. It tastes raw and dusty at first; let the finished sauce stand 10 to 15 minutes so the mustard hydrates and its heat comes up.
- Beating it to a foamThe hinge of the recipe. Currant jelly is a firm pectin gel and will only break down and lighten if you work it hard with a fork or a whisk against the plate. If you stop while it is still glossy and translucent you have flavored jelly; keep going until it is opaque and pale.
- Grape jelly behaves differentlyCommercial grape jelly is sweeter than homemade currant and may set softer, in which case it will hold less air over time. Beat it just before serving.
- Yield and servingAbout a cup and a half once aerated, enough for six to eight servings. It belongs with roast lamb or mutton, venison, ham, or cold tongue, served at cool room temperature.
- Holding itThe foam will not hold indefinitely, and chilling re-firms the pectin. Make it the same day and re-beat briefly if it has gone flat.
Currant jelly beside roast meat is a long-established English pairing, and by the time the Butterick Publishing Company issued this book in 1911 it was a familiar habit of American service: jelly with mutton, with venison, with game birds. What the mustard and salt do here is push a preserve out of the dessert column and into the sauce chapter, a common move in turn-of-the-century cookery, where the fruit-and-meat combination was often defended as a foil to the richness of fatty roasts. The technique is equally of its period. Beating a set jelly to a foam on a deep plate with a fork was the kind of small showpiece that cost nothing but labor.