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Venison Collops
Take any remains of roast venison, clear them of skin and vein, mince very finely, and mix them with a third as much of minced bacon, a beaten egg or two, a handful of crumbs, salt, pepper, and a little herb seasoning, if liked. Mix these ingredients thoroughly, form apple-sized balls; flatten and dip them in egg, and crumb them or dip them in warmed butter, and then fry of a nice pale brown.
A leftovers dish: cold roast venison reworked into fried patties. The proportions are given by eye, so the useful work is in translating them into weights and in getting the binding right.
- Collops, not slicesIn most old English usage a collop is a thin slice of meat, though the word was also applied to minced and re-formed preparations, as in Scottish minced collops. Nothing here is sliced; you are making rissoles.
- Working proportionsFor 1 lb of cooked venison, allow about 5 oz of bacon, 1 cup of fresh breadcrumbs, and 1-2 eggs. Add the eggs one at a time: the mixture should hold its shape when squeezed, not slump.
- Apple-sizedAim for balls of about 2 oz, flattened to roughly half an inch thick; a pound of meat with its bacon, crumbs and egg gives around a dozen cakes, enough for four.
- Herb seasoningProbably a dried mixed-herb blend, thyme, marjoram, sage and parsley being usual constituents. A teaspoon of dried mixed herbs, or a tablespoon of chopped fresh thyme and parsley, does the same job.
- Egg-and-crumb or butterThe recipe offers two coatings. Egg then crumbs gives a crust; dipping in warm butter alone gives a thinner, richer surface that browns faster and burns more readily. Choose one, not both.
- The fryingMedium heat, around 350F in the pan, for three to four minutes a side. The venison is already cooked, so the aim is a pale brown crust and a hot centre; hard frying dries the meat, which has almost no fat of its own.
- The bacon is doing the workRoast venison reheated on its own is dry and grainy. The minced bacon supplies the fat that holds the mixture together in the pan, so do not reduce it, and use a fatty streaky cut rather than a lean back rasher.
- ServingThe book gives none. A sharp accompaniment suits them: redcurrant or rowan jelly, or a spoonful of the reheated roasting gravy.
Cassell's belongs to a generation of household dictionaries written for kitchens where nothing cooked was thrown away, and the venison recipes assume a joint that has already been to table once. Venison in Victorian Britain often reached middle-class houses through gift rather than purchase, coming from deer parks and Scottish estates and arriving as a present or a haunch sent down from a shoot, which is part of why cookery books of the period devote so much space to what to do with the cold remains. The meat is very lean, and the addition of bacon fat, egg and crumbs is the standard nineteenth-century remedy for that leanness, the same logic that produced beef rissoles and mutton croquettes. The word collop is old, generally traced to Middle English and often linked with Scandinavian terms for a fried slice of meat, though the direction of borrowing is disputed, and it survives most visibly in Collop Monday, the day before Shrove Tuesday, when the last of the household's meat was eaten before Lent.