"Charles H. Baker, Jr.'s Own Deep South Barbecue Sauce, 1939"

Charles Henry Baker, Jr. (December 25, 1895 – November 11, 1987) 

Charles Henry Baker, Jr. was an American author best known for his culinary and cocktail writings. Baker spent much of his life traveling the world and chronicling food and drink recipes for magazines like Esquire, Town & Country, and Gourmet, for which he wrote a column during the 1940s called "Here's How".  Baker collected many of those recipes in his two-volume set The Gentleman's Companion: Being an Exotic Cookery and Drinking Book, originally published in 1939 by Derrydale Press. John J. Poister in 1983 wrote, "Volume II of The Gentleman's Companion, by Charles H. Baker, Jr., is the best book on exotic drinks I have ever encountered". Condé Nast contributing writer St. John Frizell wrote, "It's his prose, not his recipes, that deserves a place in the canon of culinary literature ... at times humorously grandiloquent, at times intimate and familiar, Baker fills his stories with colorful details about his environment and his drinking companions — Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner among them".

I know there are recipes for white barbeque sauces, but nothing like this.  From the lack of liquid, I assume this sauce is rather thick and heavy --I don't know much roasting juices you'd really get from grilling meat (I figure you could use stock or broth). The following recipe is from Baker’s The Gentleman's Companion: Being an Exotic Cookery Book (1939):

“THE AUTHOR’S OWN DEEP SOUTH BARBECUE SAUCE , for all sorts of Miscellaneous Game such as ‘Coons, ‘Possums, Big Fox or Cat Squirrels, Marsh Rabbits, Wild Shote & God Knows What Else of Dark Flesh, or Gamy Flavour, or Both

       We’ve been hungry plenty of times on camp hunts, and seem to have eaten just about anything that swims, flies or runs, through the Florida flatwoods, the pine islands in swamps and Everglades, or in the vast sawgrass marshes.  We’ve nourished on alligator tail, sand hill crane, limpkin, crow, rattlesnake, ‘possum, ‘coon, wild razorback shote, pelican and –credit it or not! – whippoorwill.  ‘Coon, ‘possum, and big brown marsh rabbits are good eating, but have to be smothered in a sauce hot and potent enough to disguise the gamey meat.  This sauce is fine to add to the braising pot half an hour before meat is tendered, or to work up while game is being grilled, roasted, smothered, or what not.  Make it plenty hot with peppers.

1 lb odd trimmings from the animal

1 big chopped carrot

1 big chopped onion

½ tsp dry hot mustard

½ cup evaporated or fresh cream

4 tbsp butter

2 to 3 tbsp lemon juice or vinegar

1 to 1 ½ tbsp flour for thickening

1 piece yellow lemon peel

Salt and lots of black pepper

1 tsp or more of worchestershire

Soak strong meats as long as possible, overnight is best, in strongly salted water, then use this sauce, made as follows:  brown the chopped game trimmings, onion, and carrot in 3 tbsp of the butter.  Cream mustard with a little gravy, and add to trimmings pan.  Take some roasting juices from the meat from time to time, and add –along with lemon juice and seasonings.  Smother and simmer until rich; strain out bones and sinew, pound vegetables fine, thin out with more of the cooking gravy, reduce 1/3, and finally thicken with 1 tbsp flour and same of butter –worked smooth—adding the cream at the last.”