Cook in salted water the finely shreded peels of two oranges and two lemons, and when they are tender put them into a vessel with one tablespoonful of mustard, a pinch of ground ginger, a pinch of cayenne pepper, a gill of Madeira wine, the juice of one orange and one lemon, some salt, and two tablespoonfuls of vinegar, and mix in with these ingredients half a pound of currant jelly.
A cold, uncooked sauce apart from the blanching of the peels. It is essentially red currant jelly loosened with wine and citrus, and it stands or falls on the peel being tender and free of bitterness.
Cumberland sauce is English in origin and generally traced to the Hanoverian dukes of Cumberland, though the attribution is traditional rather than documented. What is clear is that by the 1890s it had become a standard cold accompaniment to ham, tongue and game in the grand restaurant repertoire, which is why Charles Ranhofer includes it among the cold sauces of The Epicurean (1894), his enormous record of the Delmonico's kitchen in New York. The formula belongs to an older European habit of pairing rich cold meats with sweet-sharp fruit preparations, a line running back through medieval sauces built on wine, spice and fruit; here the currant jelly does the work that verjuice and dried fruit once did, and the shredded citrus peel supplies the bitterness that keeps the whole thing from reading as a preserve.