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Fawn, Hashed
Stew half a dozen mushrooms and a shallot in a pint of good gravy made from the trimmings of venison, or the remains of mutton gravy. Season with pepper and salt. Lay some nice slices of cold fawn in a stewpan with gravy, let them get hot through, then add a tea-spoonful each of lemon-juice and sugar, and a glass of port wine. Let it stand for a few minutes by the side of the fire, and serve hot. Time, thirty minutes to stew mushrooms, etc., five minutes to warm the slices.
A made dish for leftover roast venison, and like all such reheated dishes it lives or dies on temperature: the slices are warmed in the sauce, never simmered in it.
- The hinge: no boilingCold roast venison is already cooked through and is very lean. Held above a bare simmer it seizes and turns dry and livery within minutes. Bring the sauce to heat first, slide the meat in off the boil, and give it the five minutes the recipe allows and no more.
- "By the side of the fire"On a range this meant the cooler edge of the hob, away from the direct fire. Read it as the lowest setting on a burner, or a covered pan set off the heat entirely for five minutes.
- A glass of portIn Victorian cookery books a wine glass is generally reckoned at roughly 2 to 2.5 fl oz, about a third of a cup, not a modern tumbler. Tawny or ruby both work; add it with the lemon and sugar, as the recipe directs, and do not let the sauce reduce to syrup.
- Fawn and its substitutesFawn is the meat of a deer calf, once a by-product of estate culling and effectively unobtainable at retail now. Any cold roast venison works. Note that the mutton gravy the recipe mentions is an alternative gravy base, not an alternative meat.
- The gravyA pint is 20 fl oz British measure, 16 fl oz American; either is generous for four servings and can be reduced a little while the mushrooms stew. If you have no venison trimmings, a strong brown stock reinforced with a spoonful of redcurrant jelly stands in reasonably.
- Thirty minutes for mushroomsThat length is aimed at drawing mushroom flavour into the gravy rather than at cooking the mushrooms, which are done in five. Slice them thickly so they survive the half hour with some texture left.
- Seasoning balanceA teaspoon each of lemon juice and sugar in a pint of gravy is a small, deliberate sweet-sour correction for lean game, not a flavour in its own right. Add it at the end, taste, and adjust before the port goes in.
- YieldAbout four servings from a pint of sauce, depending on how much cold meat you have. Serve with something starchy that will take the sauce, and keep the plates hot, since the dish cools fast.
Cassell's belongs to the great age of the English "made dish" or "rechauffé" — a whole genre built on the Sunday joint reappearing on Monday in a sauce. In a household that had roasted a haunch of venison, the trimmings went to gravy and the cold slices to a hash like this one, since little from an expensive game animal was likely to be thrown away. The port, lemon and sugar are often said to be a typical Victorian accompaniment to venison, a milder relation of the sweet-spiced sauces served with game since the medieval period and a cousin of the redcurrant jelly still put beside it today. Fawn appears here because deer parks and shooting estates supplied households directly rather than through butchers; the meat of a young animal was prized as tender and mild, and its presence in the book may suggest something about who Cassell's expected to be reading rather than what was sold in a town market.