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VENISON, POTTED (another way)
Rub the venison with vinegar if it is stale, and let it lie an hour. Then dry it with a cloth, and rub it all over with red wine. Season with pepper, salt, and mace, and put it into an earthen pot or jar. Pour over it half a pint of red wine, and a pound of butter, and put it in the oven till it is quite tender. When it is done, pick the meat clean from the bones and skin, and beat it in a mortar with the fat and gravy. If you find it not sufficiently seasoned, add more seasoning, and keep beating till it is a fine paste. Then press it hard down into the pots, and pour clarified butter over it. The wine may be omitted if not approved.
A potted meat in the old English style: venison braised to collapse in wine and butter, pounded to a paste, and sealed under fat. The method still works, but two things in the original need rethinking — the treatment of stale meat, and how long the finished pots will keep.
- Ignore the vinegar rubThe opening instruction belongs to an era when hung venison was expected to be high, and vinegar does not make spoiled meat safe. Start with fresh or properly frozen venison and skip the vinegar step; the drying with a cloth and the rub with red wine that follow apply to any meat and can be kept.
- No weight is givenThe recipe never states how much venison it is seasoning, which makes the pound of butter and half-pint of wine impossible to scale exactly. A shoulder or haunch piece of about 3 lb suits these quantities; less meat than that and the paste will be greasy.
- Half a pintIn a British book of this period that is an imperial half-pint, 10 fl oz, or about 1 1/4 US cups. A pound of butter is four sticks — not an error, and not optional, since venison is very lean and the fat is what makes the paste spreadable and what seals it.
- Oven heat"Till it is quite tender" means a long slow braise, not roasting. Cover the pot and hold it at 275-300F for three to four hours, until the meat shreds under a fork. Uncovered or hotter, the butter browns and the exposed meat dries into strings that will not pound smooth.
- MaceThe lacy outer covering of the nutmeg seed, commonly described as warmer and less sweet than nutmeg itself, and a characteristic spice of English potted meats. It is sold both as whole blades and ground; use about half a teaspoon of ground mace at the start and correct at the pounding stage as the recipe directs.
- Mortar or processorA food processor does in thirty seconds what the mortar did in twenty minutes, but pulse rather than run it — the aim is a fine paste, not an emulsion. Beat the reserved fat and pan gravy back in a little at a time while the meat is still warm, or the butter will set in lumps.
- Seasoning goes in warmTaste and adjust before potting, as instructed. Cold fat mutes salt and pepper considerably, so a paste that tastes correct warm will taste flat from the refrigerator; season slightly beyond what seems right.
- The butter seal is not preservationClarified butter poured over the top excludes air and was the whole point of potting in an unrefrigerated larder. It is not a substitute for refrigeration: treat the finished pots as a fresh pâté, keep them cold, and eat within about five days once the seal is broken. Cooked low-acid meat held under fat at room temperature is exactly the condition modern food safety guidance warns against.
- Yield and servingAbout 3 lb of meat plus the butter gives roughly four half-pint pots — plenty for a dozen people as a first course. Serve at cool room temperature with toast, and something sharp alongside: pickled walnuts, cornichons, or redcurrant jelly.
Potting was the standard English method of keeping cooked meat before canning, and venison was its most prestigious subject — a gift of deer from a park was a favour that had to be used up over weeks, not days. The technique and much of the wording here descend from eighteenth-century household books. Cassell's was compiled in the 1870s and 80s for a middle-class readership that mostly bought its meat rather than shooting it.