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Venison Cutlets, Stewed
Take the cutlets from the neck, an inch thick. Dissolve a slice of fresh butter in a stewpan, put in the cutlets, and let them remain until they are lightly and equally browned on both sides. Pour over them as much good beef stock as will barely cover them, and add half a tumblerful of port or claret, a table-spoonful of vinegar, a small spoonful of brown thickening, and a little pepper and salt. Stew the cutlets gently till tender, and skim and strain the gravy. Put the cutlets on a dish, pour the gravy over, and serve very hot. Time to stew the cutlets, twenty minutes. Probable cost of venison, very uncertain.
A straightforward brown braise, but the cut named and the time given do not match: twenty minutes will not tenderise venison neck. Read the timing as a guide for loin chops and plan on much longer if you use the neck.
- The cut is the hingeNeck is one of the hardest-working muscles on a deer and needs 1.5 to 2 hours of gentle simmering before it gives. If you want to keep the twenty-minute timing, use loin or rib chops cut an inch thick and treat it as a quick pan braise; otherwise buy neck and braise it properly.
- Brown thickeningA standard Victorian term for flour cooked in butter until nut-brown, or plain flour browned and kept on hand as a paste or dried powder. Substitute a scant tablespoon of flour cooked in butter to a hazelnut colour, or finish by whisking in beurre manié at the end.
- Half a tumblerfulA Victorian tumbler held roughly 8 to 10 fl oz, so half is about 1/2 cup of port or claret. The measure is genuinely loose; treat it as 4 to 5 fl oz.
- StewpanA lidded, straight-sided pan; period examples ranged from shallow to fairly deep. A modern sauté pan or shallow braiser does the job; you want the cutlets in one layer so the stock barely covers them.
- VinegarA tablespoon of malt or red wine vinegar, working with the wine to cut the richness of the meat. Do not swap in balsamic, which would push the gravy sweet.
- DonenessLoin chops eat best pink in the middle, around 130-135F, so pull them from the pan while you reduce and skim the gravy rather than letting them sit in it. Neck braised long and slow goes the other way entirely and should be falling-tender.
- Stock"Good beef stock" means unsalted or lightly salted homemade stock that will reduce without turning briny. Salt at the end if you are using commercial stock, since the gravy is reduced and strained.
- YieldFigure two cutlets per person; the quantities scale to whatever will fit the pan in a single layer.
Venison in a Victorian household cookery book was not everyday meat, which is why Cassell's declines to price it: much of it reached the table as a gift from a shooting estate rather than from a butcher's counter, and quality varied wildly with the animal's age and how long the carcass had hung. The port-and-vinegar gravy here is one of several English treatments of the period, a descendant of the older sweet-sharp sauces that were thought to correct the dryness and strong flavour of wild deer, and a close relative of the currant jelly and claret sauces served with roast haunch. The neck was among the cheapest parts of the beast and was normally stewed rather than roasted, which suggests that the twenty-minute time given here is an editorial slip in a book assembled from many hands.