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Cherry Sauce
(Germany. For pork or game.) Wash, stone, and set aside 1 pound of ripe red cherries. Simmer the kernels, with water to cover, 15 minutes. Then strain the water, add to it the cherries, 1 pint of water, 4 cloves, 1 glass of claret, 1 slice of stale bread, and enough sugar. Cook half an hour, press through a sieve, and re-boil it until rather thick. Serve hot.
The sauce itself is a plain old-fashioned fruit purée thickened with bread, but the first step — a fifteen-minute decoction of the cherry stones, whose liquid is then poured back into the sauce — is one no current recipe would ask for.
- The kernel water is the problemThe kernel water is the questionable step -- Cherry kernels contain amygdalin, a cyanogenic glycoside that can release hydrogen cyanide when the kernel is broken or crushed and wetted. This recipe simmers the whole stones and pours that water back into the sauce; how much passes out of intact stones in fifteen minutes is small and unmeasured, but it is the source of the bitter-almond note.
- Simmering does not make it safeSimmering does not settle the question -- Heat destroys the enzyme but does not remove what has already been converted, and the recipe gives no control over how many stones are damaged in stoning or how long they steep. The step is unquantifiable rather than demonstrably dangerous.
- Not a matter of scaling downThere is no standard modern measure for a cherry-stone decoction poured into a sauce. If you want a German cherry sauce for pork or game, a current recipe flavoured with cinnamon, clove or a little kirsch is the simpler route.
- A glass of claretHousehold books of this period usually reckon a wineglass at about 2 fluid ounces, a quarter cup; the recipe says only "glass," and usage varied. Claret means dry red Bordeaux or anything similar.
- A pintIf the book is American, that is 16 fluid ounces, two cups, rather than the imperial 20; the page itself gives no indication.
- The bread is the thickenerA slice of stale crumb, cooked down and then pressed through the sieve, bodies a fruit sauce without flour.
- "Enough sugar" is genuinely openThe recipe says only "ripe red cherries"; sour ones would need a great deal, sweet ones almost none. There is no figure to recover here.
- YieldA pound of cherries reduced and sieved gives roughly two cups of sauce; the number of servings depends on how generously it is spooned out.
Kirschsoße belongs to the German and Austrian habit of setting a sharp cooked fruit against fatty roast meat -- the same logic as apple with goose or lingonberry with game -- and sour Morello-type cherries would suit the purpose better than sweet ones, though the recipe specifies only "ripe red cherries." Thickening with a slice of stale bread rather than flour is an older technique still: bread crumb was a common binder for sharp fruit and wine sauces in medieval European cookery. The stone-simmering step reflects a period fondness for the bitter-almond flavour of stone-fruit pits, which shows up elsewhere in noyau ratafias and almond-scented custards.