Sauce Galentijn (Galengale Sauce)

Author: Justin
Serves a bunch (20 for a major dish?)

2 large, thick slices white bread	3/4 cup wine
4 Tbl white sugar	1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp clove	1/2 tsp galengale

Toast the bread until a rich brown but not burned. Put in a bowl, pour the wine over it, mash it together and let soak for a few minutes. Add sugar, toss in the Cuisinart and blend until reasonably smooth.

Boil the mixture at the lowest possible simmer until some of the alcohol burns off and it thickens a bit; stir frequently to keep it from burning. Once thickened, remove from fire and add the spices.

This can be refrigerated and served cold quite successfully. I haven't yet tried it hot.

Notes and Variations

A decent, gently sweet sauce. The well-read will notice that this recipe is essentially hypocras with a bread binder. Works decently well on fish.

I made this with a good full-bodied red wine. The results are tasty, but probably inauthentic: the original source seems to distinguish between "wine" and "red wine", and this recipe calls for the former. I suspect that a subtle white is more appropriate to the dish, and is probably worth trying as a variation. (But it wouldn't come out such a lovely shade of purple.)

Note that the original calls for mashing this through a sieve. I suspect that this would produce a smoother sauce than the somewhat grainy results I get with the Cuisinart. I would encourage trying this out if you have the time. I would also recommend trying to increase the spices: the sweetness level seemed right, but I think it could probably use a bit more punch.

Sources

Reconstructed for the Falling Leaves '04 potluck, and served with poached salmon, which worked reasonably well.

The original is from MS KANTL Gent 15, a Renaissance Dutch cookbook. The translation of this recipe (from Coquinaria) is:

1.24. To make "galentijn".
Take white bread and cut it in thin slices. Push [the slices] on the fire to brown them, then steep them in wine. Beat the steeped bread up with some potsugar or floursugar and strain it through a sieve. Boil it as if it were [a] pepper[sauce]. When yoiu take it off [the fire] add mace, some nutmeg and some cloves, but galanga the most. And when you want to keep it some time, let it boil the longer.