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Puree Cumberland
Peel and slice five each sound apples and bananas, place in saucepan with a half ounce butter, a tablespoon sugar, two tablespoons currant jelly, a half teaspoon salt and saltspoon cayenne. Mix well and cook on fire for twenty-five minutes, frequently stirring meanwhile, press through sieve into a bowl, dress on a vegetable dish and serve.
A sweet-hot fruit purée meant as an accompaniment to roast game, duck or ham rather than a dessert. The method is straightforward; the pitfalls are scorching and seasoning.
- The hinge: low heat and constant attentionApples and bananas both stick and catch once their sugars concentrate, and twenty-five minutes is long enough to scorch a thin pan. Use a heavy saucepan over low heat, cover for the first ten minutes to draw out moisture, and stir down to the bottom regularly.
- Archaic measuresHalf an ounce of butter is one tablespoon. A saltspoon is roughly a quarter teaspoon, which is a substantial amount of cayenne for this quantity — start with an eighth and taste at the end.
- Currant jellyThe book means red currant jelly, the standard English preserve behind all Cumberland sauces. Redcurrant jelly is still sold; do not substitute black currant jam, which is far sweeter and muddier in colour.
- Choose the apples for acidWith five bananas going in, the mixture is already sweet and soft. A tart, firm apple — Granny Smith, Bramley, Braeburn — keeps the purée from tasting flat. The half teaspoon of salt is not a misprint and does real work here.
- Bananas need less time than applesBananas collapse in ten minutes; apples want the full twenty-five. Give the apples a head start and add the bananas partway through if you want cleaner flavour, though the original's single-pot approach works if the heat stays low.
- SievingA food mill or a fine sieve pressed with a wooden spoon gives the smooth texture intended. A blender or stick blender produces a purée that is smoother still but slightly gummier from the banana starch.
- Yield and servingFive apples and five bananas make a generous quantity, likely three to four cups, enough for eight or more as a condiment. Serve warm or at room temperature alongside roast pork, ham, duck or venison. It keeps three or four days covered in the refrigerator and thickens as it cools.
Cumberland sauce proper is a cold relish of red currant jelly, port, orange and lemon zest, mustard and cayenne, generally traced to the German-influenced court cookery of nineteenth-century England and usually said to honour one of the Dukes of Cumberland; it became a fixture with cold game and ham. What Alexander Filippini offers here in The International Cook Book (1906) is a loose cousin — the jelly and cayenne survive, the wine and citrus are gone, and the body comes from cooked fruit instead. The banana suits the period: by 1900 the Central American trade had made bananas comparatively cheap and reliable in American cities, and they turn up in American cookbooks of the era in savoury as well as sweet dishes. Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, gave many dishes in this book the names of other nations.