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Venison Fry
Cleanse the fry, and cut it into neat slices about half an inch thick. Season these with pepper and salt, dredge flour upon them, and fry in hot fat till they are brightly browned and sufficiently cooked. Drain them, put them round a hot dish, place fried parsley in the centre, and send highly-seasoned brown gravy to table in a tureen. Red currant jelly may be served as an accompaniment. Venison fry consists of the liver, heart, skirts, melt, etc. Probable cost, very uncertain.
A plainly written treatment of deer offal, from a period when nothing from a carcass was wasted. The whole dish turns on not overcooking the liver.
- What "fry" means hereNot a cooking method but the pluck — the assorted internal organs sold or kept together after butchering. Cassell's spells it out at the end: liver, heart, skirts (the diaphragm muscle), melt (the spleen) and whatever else came with them.
- Cook the pieces separatelyLiver is done in about 2 minutes a side and turns grainy past that; heart and skirt are muscle and want a little longer over slightly gentler heat. Frying them all in one pan at one time, as the wording implies, guarantees that something is wrong.
- "Cleanse the fry"Trim membrane and any large vessels or ducts, and cut out greenish patches near the gall bladder on the liver. Soaking the liver in milk or cold salted water for 30 minutes and patting it dry firms it and mutes the metallic edge.
- Frying fat and heatAny neutral fat or clarified butter at roughly 350-375F. Flour the slices just before they go in, or the dredge turns to paste and will not brown brightly.
- Fried parsleyVery dry, sturdy curly parsley dropped into the hot fat for 15-20 seconds, then drained on paper. Wet parsley spits violently; the fat must be hot enough to set it crisp and green rather than stew it dark.
- The gravy"Highly-seasoned brown gravy" would generally have been a well-reduced meat stock thickened with a browned roux; a spoonful of port or vinegar is one modern way to sharpen it. Offal is rich, and the currant jelly supplies acidity as well as sweetness.
- YieldCassell's gives no yield. Allow about 4 oz of mixed offal per person, and serve immediately — reheated liver goes dry and grainy.
- SourcingDeer liver and heart come from a butcher or a licensed game dealer today. Where chronic wasting disease is present, local wildlife authorities advise against eating organs from wild deer; farmed venison offal avoids the question.
Organs spoil far faster than muscle, and the fry was presumably eaten soon after the carcass was taken. Cassell's cannot price it: "probable cost, very uncertain" is a formula the compiler uses routinely for game, whose price varied by season and supply. The vocabulary is old butchery English: "melt" for spleen (from the same root as milt) and "skirt" for the diaphragm, a term that survives in beef skirt steak. The red currant jelly and highly-seasoned brown gravy follow the standard nineteenth-century British handling of all venison, where a sweet-sharp jelly was considered the necessary counterweight to dark, lean game meat.