Home › The Principles of Cookery › Venison, Cold, Stewed
Venison, Cold, Stewed
Take the remains of cold cooked venison; cut the meat into neat slices, and put these aside. Put the bones and trimmings into a saucepan, pour over them as much strong unseasoned stock (or, failing this, water) as will cover them, and add a bunch of sweet herbs, a little grated nutmeg, and pepper and salt. Let them simmer till the gravy is good. Strain it, thicken with a small lump of brown thickening, and put it by the side of the fire to throw up its grease. Skim it, and add a spoonful of ketchup, a spoonful of red currant jelly, and a glassful of claret. Put the slices of venison into the sauce, and let them get thoroughly hot without boiling. Squeeze the juice of a lemon into the gravy. Put the meat on a dish, pour the gravy over, and garnish with sliced lemon. The remains of cold cooked venison may be converted into an excellent stew soup. Time to stew the bones, about two hours. Probable cost of venison, very uncertain.
A Victorian second-day dish: the bones make the sauce, the sliced meat is only warmed through. Almost everything that can go wrong here happens in the last five minutes.
- The hinge: never let it boilVenison is very lean, and slices of already-cooked meat toughen and turn grey the moment the liquid simmers. Bring the sauce to just below a simmer, slide the meat in off the heat if need be, and give it 4-5 minutes to warm through.
- "Brown thickening"A standing kitchen preparation of flour cooked in butter or dripping until nut-brown, kept in a jar and used by the lump. Make a brown roux from about 1 tbsp each butter and flour, cooked until it smells toasted, and whisk it into the strained stock.
- "Ketchup"In Victorian Britain an unqualified "ketchup" in a cookery book normally means mushroom or walnut ketchup, thin, dark and salty, not tomato ketchup. A teaspoon of mushroom ketchup, or failing that Worcestershire sauce or a dash of soy, gives the intended savoury note.
- A glassful of claretPeriod wineglass measures varied; they are usually reckoned at around 2 fl oz / 60 ml, so treat anything from that up to a small tumbler as within range. Claret means dry red Bordeaux; any dry, unoaked red does the job. Let it cook into the sauce for a minute or two before the meat goes in to take the raw edge off.
- Bunch of sweet herbsA bouquet garni: parsley stalks, thyme and a bay leaf tied together. Tie it with string so it lifts out cleanly before straining.
- Degreasing"Put it by the side of the fire to throw up its grease" means hold it at a bare tremble at one edge of the pan so the fat collects at the cool side and can be skimmed. Chilling the strained stock and lifting the set fat off is quicker and more thorough.
- Bone stock timingTwo hours suits roast venison bones. If your stock tastes thin at that point, reduce it hard rather than simmering longer; the flavour is in concentration, not extra time.
- Quantities and yieldThe original assumes whatever is left on the joint. As a guide, 1 lb / 450 g sliced cooked venison with about 400 ml of finished sauce serves three or four, with mashed potato or fried bread to catch the gravy.
- Season at the endReduced stock, ketchup and currant jelly all push the salt and sugar upward. Taste after the lemon juice goes in, not before.
Cassell's belonged to the era when a large joint of venison arrived from an estate or a game dealer and had to be used down to the bone, and this entry is essentially a set of instructions for using up what is left of that joint. The pairing of venison with red currant jelly, claret and a squeeze of lemon is a standard British game formula of the period: sweet-sharp fruit and acid to offset meat that is lean, dark and often strongly flavoured from hanging. The note that the cost is "very uncertain" is telling, since venison in late Victorian Britain was often not a shop purchase at a fixed price but came as a gift, a perquisite, or from the deer parks of large estates.