Cumberland Sauce

the cold English sauce for game and raised pies: redcurrant jelly melted with port, shallot, and mustard, and hung with fine shreds of blanched orange and lemon zest

Origin: England

From the journey of Currant.

Cumberland sauce has almost nothing to do with Cumberland. The name appears in the later nineteenth century and is generally taken to honour the Duke of Cumberland, and the sauce itself was codified in the great hotel kitchens of the period, entering the classical repertoire when Escoffier set it down as sauce Cumberland. Its foundation is redcurrant jelly, the English preserve par excellence, melted rather than cooked so that it keeps its clear scarlet and its sharpness, and lengthened with port; into it go shredded orange and lemon zest blanched to take out the bitterness, a little shallot softened in the same way, mustard, and ginger. It is served cold, never hot, and never thickened, so that it stays somewhere between a sauce and a syrup, and it belongs to the cold table: raised game pies, cold ham and gammon, venison, tongue, terrines and pâtés, and the sideboard of a shooting lunch. It is a period piece and none the worse for it, and it makes a case that is easily forgotten in modern British cooking, namely that acid, sweetness, and bitterness together are the proper answer to cold fat meat.

Ingredients

  • 1 whole large orange
  • 1 whole lemon
  • 1 whole banana shallot, very finely chopped
  • 340 g redcurrant jelly (one standard jar)
  • 150 ml ruby port
  • 1 tsp English mustard powder
  • 0.5 tsp ground ginger
  • 1 pinch cayenne pepper
  • 1 pinch fine sea salt

Method

  1. Pare the zest from the orange and the lemon with a peeler, taking no white pith, and cut it into the finest possible julienne shreds. Squeeze and reserve the juice of both fruits.
  2. Drop the shreds and the chopped shallot into a small pan of boiling water and blanch for 5 minutes. Drain, refresh under cold water, and drain again thoroughly.
  3. In a small pan, warm the redcurrant jelly over a low heat, whisking, until it has melted to a smooth liquid. Do not let it boil.
  4. Mix the mustard powder and ground ginger to a paste with a tablespoon of the port, then whisk this into the melted jelly along with the remaining port, the reserved orange and lemon juice, the cayenne, and the salt. Simmer very gently for 5 minutes.
  5. Stir in the blanched zest and shallot, take off the heat, and leave to cool completely. Pour into a jar or a small bowl and chill for at least 2 hours before serving. It thickens to a loose, syrupy consistency as it cools.

Notes

Cumberland sauce keeps for three weeks in a sealed jar in the refrigerator and improves for the first few days as the zest softens and the flavours settle. It is never thickened with flour or cornflour, and it is never served hot; both are common errors. Serve with cold ham and gammon, raised game and pork pies, venison, cold tongue, duck and goose, terrines, and hard cheeses, and put it on the table at Christmas beside the cold cuts. If you make your own redcurrant jelly the sauce is markedly better, since a home-made jelly is sharper and less sweet than most jarred ones; if using a very sweet commercial jelly, add an extra squeeze of lemon at the end.

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