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Venison Collops, Scotch
Take in slices from the neck or lion as much venison as may be required. Trim neatly, and put them aside. Put the bones and trimmings into a saucepan, cover either with cold stock or water, and let them stew gently till the gravy becomes strong and good. Strain it, thicken with brown thickening, clear it from fat, and season with salt, cayenne, and a small pinch of grated nutmeg. Flavour with strained lemon-juice and a glassful of claret, to which may be added, if liked, a few drops of tarragon, chilli, or shallot vinegar. Fry the collops in butter, dish them, and pour the gravy over. By way of variety, vinegar and a small lump of sugar may be stirred into the gravy in the dish, and red currant jelly dissolved in the gravy in the tureen. Time, about two hours to draw the gravy from the bones. Probable cost of venison, very uncertain.
A sauce built from the trimmings and a fast pan-fry of the meat. The written order matters: the stock takes about two hours, the collops take minutes, so make the gravy first and hold it warm.
- "Lion" is loinA printer's slip for loin. Neck or loin, cut into collops — thin slices about 1/2 inch thick, cut across the grain. Loin gives the tender result; neck wants pounding lightly first.
- Brown thickeningA brown roux made in advance and kept on hand: equal weights butter and flour cooked slowly to the colour of hazelnut shells. About 1 tablespoon each will thicken 2 cups of stock. Whisk it into the hot strained gravy off the boil and simmer 10 minutes to lose the raw flour taste.
- A glassful of claretClaret is red Bordeaux; a wine glass of the period is usually reckoned at roughly 2 fl oz (about 1/4 cup), though the measure was never standard. Any dry, unoaked red works. Add it to the gravy and simmer a few minutes to take the raw edge off the wine.
- Don't cook the collops throughThis is where the dish is won or lost. Venison has almost no intramuscular fat and turns dry and livery past medium-rare. Get the butter foaming, give thin slices 60-90 seconds a side, pull them at 125-130F, and let them rest while you plate. Farmed venison is leaner still than the wild meat assumed here.
- Fat for fryingButter alone will brown too fast at the heat needed for a good crust. Use half butter, half neutral oil, or clarified butter.
- Skimming"Clear it from fat" is easiest done by chilling the strained stock so the fat sets on top and lifts off. If time is short, blot the surface with strips of paper towel.
- The flavoured vinegarsTarragon vinegar is still sold; chilli and shallot vinegar are simple infusions, or substitute a few drops of sherry vinegar. The quantity is genuinely tiny — a seasoning, not an ingredient.
- Two finishes, not oneTwo extra touches -- The closing sentence offers vinegar with a small lump of sugar stirred into the gravy in the serving dish, and redcurrant jelly dissolved in the gravy in the tureen. The two are joined by "and", so the text does not make clear whether they were meant together or as alternatives; one at a time is the safer choice.
- YieldNo quantity is given. Reckon 5-6 oz of trimmed venison per person, and expect about 2 cups of finished gravy from the bones of a loin serving four.
"Collop" is an old word for a slice of meat cut for quick frying, found in cookery books from the sixteenth century onward and surviving in Collop Monday, the day before Shrove Tuesday, when the household ate up its meat. The "Scotch" here points to Scotland, where the Highland deer forests were an important source of British venison in the nineteenth century, and the sauce is thoroughly of the period: a stock drawn from the bones and trimmings so nothing is wasted, thickened with the brown roux that cookery books of the day directed be made up in advance and kept on hand, sharpened with claret and lemon and finished with redcurrant jelly. That pairing of game with a tart red preserve is long-established across northern Europe, and it does practical work as well as traditional — the acid and sugar cut the dryness of very lean meat. Cassell's note that the cost of venison is "very uncertain" is telling: with little commercial or farmed supply, price depended on the shooting season and on who owned the ground.