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Venison, Gravy For
A strong, unflavoured gravy, seasoned with salt only, is generally served with venison. It may be made as follows. Take the trimmings of the venison; or, failing these, a pound or two of the scrag end of a neck of mutton cut into chops. Fry these till they are brightly browned on both sides. Pour over them a quart of boiling water, and let the gravy simmer gently till it is reduced one-half. Skim as required, and season with salt. Let it get cold, free it entirely from fat, and serve in a tureen. The meat on the mutton bones may be potted and used as a breakfast relish. For sauces to serve with venison, see VENISON, SAUCES FOR. Probable cost, very uncertain.
A plain reduction stock rather than a sauce: no aromatics, no thickening, no wine. The restraint is deliberate, since the sweet and sharp sauces served alongside venison are meant to supply all the flavour.
- The hinge: brown hard, season lateAlmost all the flavour comes from the fond on the trimmings, so fry them until genuinely dark brown, not merely coloured, and deglaze the pan into the gravy. Salt only at the end, after the liquid has reduced by half, or the finished gravy will be inedibly salty.
- A quartIn an English book of this period a quart is 40 fl oz, so about 5 US cups. Reduced by half it yields roughly 1 imperial pint. The recipe gives no indication of how many it is meant to serve.
- Scrag end of muttonThe bony neck end, sold cut into chops. Mutton is scarce in most markets now; lamb neck, or lamb bones plus a little shoulder meat, gives the same gelatine and marrow, though a milder flavour. Venison bones and trimmings from the butcher are better still.
- TimingReducing a quart by half over a gentle simmer takes 45 minutes to an hour and a half depending on the pan's width. Judge by volume, not the clock, and keep the heat low enough that the surface barely moves so the gravy stays clear.
- Why it is cooledChilling sets the fat in a solid cap that lifts off cleanly, which matters here because venison and mutton fat both taste strongly of tallow when cold. Cool it uncovered, refrigerate, then lift the fat and reheat to serve, despite the instruction to "serve in a tureen" as written.
- ConsistencyThis is a thin, clear gravy with no flour and no butter finish, and it is supposed to be. If you want body, reduce further rather than thickening; extra bones will give more gelatine.
- The potted meatThe recipe says only that the meat from the mutton bones may be potted as a breakfast relish; period potting usually meant pounding the picked meat with butter and a little spice under a butter seal. Treat it as a fresh dish and keep it refrigerated for a few days at most, not the weeks a period cook would have expected.
- "Probable cost, very uncertain"Cassell's gives a probable cost for most entries; here it declines to, presumably because the price of venison and of trimmings varied so widely.
Cassell's treats venison as a meat that needs no help from the stockpot and considerable help from the sauceboat: the gravy is deliberately "unflavoured", while the accompanying sauces are handled in a separate cross-referenced entry. That division reflects how venison often reached a Victorian kitchen in the first place. Much of it came as game from private parks and estates, arriving as a gift, often well hung and strongly flavoured, and cooks were taught to frame it rather than season it. The instruction to fall back on scrag end of mutton is a quiet acknowledgment that the trimmings might already have been used or might never have arrived. Potting the spent bones' meat for breakfast is ordinary period thrift: nothing that had given up its gelatine was thrown out while it still had a use.