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VENISON (a la Daube)
Take about three pounds of meat from the neck, and cut it into neat pieces. Put the rest, bones and trimmings, into an earthen jar which has a closely-fitting lid. Throw in with these eight ounces of bacon cut up small, a finely-minced shallot, a pinch of powdered mace, a small lump of sugar, and a little salt and cayenne, and pour over all as much stock as will cover the bones, etc. Put the lid on the jar, and place it in a saucepan of boiling water. Keep the water boiling round it for two hours. Season the slices of venison with pepper and salt, and fry them in butter till they are brown. Strain the gravy, stir a glassful of port into it, and put it, with the meat, into a clean saucepan. Simmer all gently together till the venison is done enough. Put the meat on a dish, pour the gravy over and round it, and serve very hot. Send red currant jelly to table as an accompaniment. Time to simmer the meat in the gravy, a quarter of an hour. Probable cost of venison, very uncertain. Sufficient for six or seven persons.
The method is really two recipes running in parallel: a long gentle extraction of the bones and trimmings to build the gravy, and a quick fry-and-simmer of the meat itself. Read the timings as belonging to two different things.
- The hinge: neck meat and a quarter of an hourFifteen minutes in the gravy will only work if the pieces are cut thin and small, and modern farmed venison neck is still sinewy. Either slice it very thin across the grain, or accept that it wants 1½ to 2 hours of gentle braising in the gravy instead.
- The earthen jarThis is a bain-marie: a lidded stoneware jar standing in a pan of boiling water, so the contents stay at or just below boiling and the gravy stays clear. A heatproof jar or a small covered casserole set in a deep pan of simmering water does the same, topped up as it evaporates.
- A glassful of portThe recipe says only 'a glassful'; a wineglass in Victorian cookery books is usually reckoned at roughly 2 to 2½ fl oz, about a quarter cup. It goes in unreduced, so use a tawny or ruby port you would drink rather than cooking wine.
- BaconEight ounces of Victorian bacon typically meant a fat, dry-salt-cured cut, added here for richness and salt as much as for any smoke. Unsmoked pancetta or salt pork is closer than modern sweet-cured streaky.
- Mace and cayenneMace is the outer covering of nutmeg, warmer and less sweet; buy it ground in small quantities as it fades. A pinch of each is genuinely a pinch — the seasoning is meant to sit behind the venison, not in front of it.
- StockNo quantity is given because it depends on your jar: enough to cover the bones, roughly a pint to a pint and a half. Beef or veal stock suits better than chicken, and it should be unsalted since the bacon salts the dish.
- LeannessFarmed venison is leaner than the park deer this book assumed. Fry in butter over a good heat for colour only, and do not let the pan dry out — there is no fat in the meat to protect it.
- Yield and accompanimentSix to seven as written, on the assumption of several other dishes at table; four is more realistic as a main course. Redcurrant jelly is not optional garnish here — its acidity and sweetness are what balance the port and the mace.
À la daube borrows its name from the French daube, a slow braise of meat in wine and stock traditionally cooked in a lidded earthenware daubière whose shape encouraged condensation to fall back on the meat. Cassell's places the dish in a period when much British venison still came from private parks and deer forests rather than through the ordinary meat trade, which is likely why the book will not commit to a price: it was a gift or a perquisite as often as a purchase, and cookery writers treated it as an ingredient a household might suddenly have to deal with, bones and all. The pairing with redcurrant jelly is long established as an English rather than a French convention, and it survives today as a standard accompaniment to game.