Cumberland Sauce

Cumberland sauce, the story goes, was invented in Hanover in the nineteenth century and named after the Duke of Cumberland, an English commander and son of King George II who fought the French alongside the Germans. The nobility of Hanover and the English royal house have very strong ties: six English monarchs have Hanoverian roots, from George I, crowned in 1714, to Queen Victoria, who died in 1901. I have also read another version, in which the duke is Ernest Augustus instead. He became King of Hanover in 1837, when Victoria, being a woman, could not inherit the crown there.

Enough history, and more about the sauce itself! Cumberland has traditionally been served with dark meat such as venison, elk, lamb and ham. There is no exact recipe for it, but most often it is made with redcurrants, port, mustard, citrus fruit and ginger. In spite of its German origin, Cumberland sauce is nowadays popular and very common in Britain.

I made my own batch yesterday to go with cured reindeer and puikula potatoes, the long floury ones from Lapland, although the sauce is really bound for the Christmas table, to sit beside the ham. Cumberland is good cold as well, so it can perfectly well be made a couple of days ahead. There was port waiting in the cupboard too, a Late Bottled Vintage from 2000, of which the onion soup had used up only four centilitres. The idea did not occur to me, however, until the potatoes were already boiling, and a rush followed.

The first thing to suffer in the rush was the shredding of the peel, which is the most laborious step in the whole recipe. Only the coloured surface is taken from the orange and the lemon, because the white pith is bitter, and the strips ought to come out as thin as the shreds in marmalade. Mine came out as thick as matchsticks. Four minutes of soaking in hot water takes the rest of the bitterness out of the peel. The chopped shallots get the same treatment for a minute, since the onion has hardly any time to cook in the sauce and would otherwise stay too sharp. The cooking itself is over in a couple of minutes. The port goes in only after that, so its flavour and its alcohol stay in the sauce. Traditionally the sauce is made with redcurrant jelly, I am told, but I had jam, and the berries show up whole in the result. On the plate I spooned the sauce over the halved potatoes, and it tasted quite nice.

Making the sauce in a hurry, I managed to produce a rather visually challenged batch. For a festive table I would consider stretching the sauce with a little water and thickening it with dark Maizena, a brown sauce thickener, which gives it a handsome brown colour in place of the washed-out pink. I would also set aside a little extra orange peel to scatter over the sauce as a garnish.