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Mutton, Loin of, Cooked Like Venison
A loin of mutton may be made to eat like venison by boiling down a woodcock or snipe which has hung so long as to be though too high for roasting, and using the gravy to moisten the mutton stew. The mutton should have been well kept. Take off the skin and some of the fat, bone, and put it into a stewpan with the gravy, and the same quantity of port wine, an onion, a few peppercorns, half a tea-spoonful of minced herbs, and a sprig of parsley. Stew very gently, and skim well; this must be done often and as long as any greasy particles remain on the surface. Serve very hot with red currant jelly. Time, about three hours. Probable cost, 10d. per pound.
The method rests on two things a modern kitchen cannot supply: a game bird deliberately held until it is putrid, and mutton hung for weeks in a cool larder. The first is the reason this cannot be cooked today.
- The bird is the problemThe recipe specifically calls for a woodcock or snipe "hung so long as to be though too high for roasting" — that is, one already held past the point at which it would be roasted. Cooking down a bird in that state kills bacteria but does not remove the breakdown products and amines that spoilage has already generated, some of which are heat-stable.
- "High" was a flavour, not a warningVictorian taste prized game held to the edge of decay, and cookery writers distinguished degrees of "highness" much as we discuss ripeness in cheese. The distinction carries no food-safety meaning; the birds were hung unrefrigerated at larder temperature, often for several days.
- Woodcock and snipeBoth are migratory quarry species subject to shooting seasons and legal protection outside them across the UK, the US and much of Europe. In the US the sale of wild-shot migratory game birds is prohibited; in the UK they may be sold in season by game dealers, but they are not a general-market item.
- Nothing is measuredThe key quantities are missing -- The recipe does specify half a teaspoonful of minced herbs, an onion, a sprig of parsley and about three hours, but the quantity of game gravy is undefined, the port is "the same quantity" as that undefined volume, and "well kept" mutton is unquantified. Even setting the spoilage aside, the main proportions cannot be read reliably.
- What the technique was forThe long, gentle stew and the obsessive skimming exist to strip mutton fat, which sets hard and tallowy on the palate; port and currant jelly then supply the sweet-acid edge associated with venison. That combination is sound and survives in modern braises.
- If you want the dishUse a current recipe for loin or shoulder of mutton braised in port with juniper and redcurrant jelly, made with fresh meat from a butcher.
Cassell's belongs to a long line of British cookery books offering "mock" versions of prestige foods, and venison was among the most imitated: through the nineteenth century it came largely, it is generally said, from private deer parks and the shooting estates, reaching the general market only in small quantities and at high prices. Mutton, by contrast, was everywhere — the 10d. a pound quoted here was ordinary butcher's meat. What the cook is really chasing is the gamy, slightly musky note of hung venison, and the technique used to fake it — borrowing the concentrated liquor of an over-ripe game bird — reflects a period taste for "high" meat that goes well beyond modern practice, though game is still hung today to develop flavour. The port and redcurrant jelly, the other half of the disguise, outlived the trick: they remain the standard accompaniment to venison in British cooking.