Name: Sauce for Wild Fowl
Ingredients: three heads of shallots; a gill of claret

Sauce for Wild Fowl

A sauce made from shallots, claret, water, bread, pepper, mace, nutmeg, salt, and butter, served over roasted wild fowl.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription

Sauce for Wild Fowl

Ingredients

three heads of shallots
a gill of claret

Directions

Take a gill of claret, with as much water, some grated bread, three heads of shallots, a little whole pepper, mace, grated nutmeg, and salt.
Let them stew over the fire.
Beat it up with butter.
Put it under the wild fowl, which being a little roasted, will afford gravy to mix with this sauce.

By Mary Randolph. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures. See the original page.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Shallots: Softens as it stews, adding a mild savoury sweetness to the sauce base.
Claret: Adds acidity and wine flavour as the liquid that stews the other ingredients.
Grated bread (in the method): Thickens the sauce as it stews, giving it body.
Butter (in the method): Enriches the sauce and gives it a smooth, glossy finish when beaten in.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.