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Roast Venison
Wipe meat with a piece of cheese-cloth wrung from cold water, spread meat generously with soft Cottolene and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place on rack in dripping pan, and dredge meat and bottom of pan with flour. Add three slices of onion, six slices of carrot, three stalks of celery cut in inch pieces. Bake one hour in a hot oven, basting every ten minutes for the first half-hour, afterwards occasionally. Serve with the following Wine Sauce. (Mutton may be prepared in same manner).
A straightforward dry roast of a lean cut, written when a "hot oven" and an hour was considered instruction enough. The details worth translating are the fat, the temperature, and the doneness the original never mentions.
- CottoleneA branded cottonseed-oil shortening sold heavily from the 1890s onward, and long gone from shelves. Any solid fat does the same job here; softened butter, lard or beef suet all work, and venison wants the fat because it has almost none of its own.
- A hot oven425-450F. The flour dredged over the meat and across the pan bottom is meant to catch and brown fast at that heat, giving the pan drippings colour and body for the sauce.
- One hour is a cut, not a ruleThe timing would suit a roast of perhaps 4-5 lb, though the recipe never says. Venison is lean and turns dry and livery past medium-rare, so cook to an internal temperature at the thickest part and rest fifteen minutes rather than watching the clock.
- Which cutProbably a haunch or saddle of deer, though the recipe does not say; venison was sold by butchers in season. A boned leg or loin from a game dealer or a farmed-venison supplier behaves the same way.
- BastingEvery ten minutes for the first half-hour is not fussiness; with no marbling, the surface fat is all that keeps the exterior from hardening. Once the crust has set, occasional basting is enough.
- The vegetablesOnion, carrot and celery in the pan are aromatics for the drippings, not a side dish. They will be dark and spent by the end; strain them out when you make the wine sauce.
- Mutton in the same wayMutton, meat from a sheep generally over a year old and often older, is rare in shops now. A leg of lamb substitutes, but it is fatter and milder and needs no added fat at all.
- YieldA 4-5 lb roast serves six to eight.
This comes from one of the many turn-of-the-century cookbooks published under the shadow of a shortening brand: Cottolene was a cottonseed-oil product promoted by the N. K. Fairbank Company as a cheaper, lighter substitute for lard, and books of recipes calling for it by name were a standard piece of grocery-trade advertising. That the recipe closes by offering mutton as an alternative tells you the method mattered more than the animal: the same rules, and the same wine sauce, would serve for whatever lean joint was at hand.