Original Receipt from 'The Cook's Oracle' by William Kitchiner (Kitchiner 1830)Orange-gravy Sauce, for wild Ducks, Woodcocks, Snipes, Widgeon, and Teal, &c
Set on a saucepan with half a pint of veal gravy, add to it half a dozen leaves of basil, a small onion, and a roll of orange or lemon-peel, and let it boil up for a few minutes, and strain it off. Put to the clear gravy the juice of a Seville orange, or lemon, half a tea-spoonful of salt, the same of pepper, and a glass of red wine; send it up hot. Eschalot and Cayenne may be added.
Obs.-This is an excellent sauce for all kinds of wild water-fowl.
The common way of gashing the breast and squeezing in an orange, cools and hardens the flesh, and compels every one to eat duck that way: some people like wild fowl very little done, and without any sauce.