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Venison Soup, Made from the Remains of Cold Roast Venison
Break up the bone into small pieces, put them into a stewpan, and cover with cold water, or with stock, if at hand. Put with this two carrots, two onions, each stuck with a clove, and a little pepper and salt. Let the liquor boil, skim carefully, and simmer gently for three hours or more. Strain it, and thicken with a little brown thickening. Let it simmer again by the side of the fire till it has thrown up its grease, then skim it. Let it boil again, add a table-spoonful of red currant jelly and a glassful of port or claret, and serve very hot. Cut some stale bread into dice, fry these in hot fat, drain them on a sieve before the fire, and send them to table with the soup. If there be any meat left on the bones, it may be cut up, and either stewed and rubbed through a sieve or pounded to a pulp, and stirred into the soup. Time, four to five hours.
A frugal Victorian bone soup that depends on long, gentle extraction and a sweet-acid finish. Everything hinges on skimming and on not letting the pot come to a rolling boil once the bones are in.
- Brown thickeningThe book's term for flour browned with butter or fat and whisked into the hot strained stock. No proportions are given here; roughly 1 oz of flour will lightly thicken 1 1/2 pints. Use less if you want a broth rather than a gravy-soup.
- Simmer, do not boilA hard boil emulsifies fat and bone protein back into the liquid and turns the soup cloudy. Keep it at a bare tremble for the three hours, skimming the grey scum in the first twenty minutes when most of it rises.
- "By the side of the fire"On a coal range the pot was pushed off the direct heat so one side stayed hotter, driving fat to the cool side where it could be lifted off. On a modern hob, set the pan half off the burner, or simply chill the strained stock and lift the solid fat from the top.
- A glassfulA wine glass in this period is roughly 2 fl oz, not a modern 6 oz pour. Add it near the end and give it two or three minutes to lose its raw edge.
- Redcurrant jellyNot decoration — the sugar and acid are what make venison read as venison rather than as plain beef broth. If yours is very sweet, cut it with a teaspoon of wine vinegar or lemon juice and taste before serving.
- The leftover meatThe book gives two routes: stew it and rub it through a sieve, or pound it to a pulp, then stir it in. Meat already roasted once tends to toughen when reheated in liquid, though the book does not say so. A short blitz in a food processor with a ladle of the hot soup does the same work; stir it in off the heat.
- CroutonsFry the diced stale bread in beef dripping or butter until dark gold, drain on paper rather than a sieve, and keep them separate until the moment of serving or they dissolve.
Cassell's places this in a run of "remains" recipes -- the second-day dishes in which a joint was expected to yield a roast, a made dish and finally a soup. Venison rarely reached middle-class kitchens through the butcher: deer were largely the property of landed estates, and a haunch often arrived as a present, which made wasting the bones unthinkable. The port and redcurrant jelly are the same pairing served with the original roast, carried over into the soup -- a convention generally traced to the older English habit of sweetening and spicing strong-flavoured game, and one that survives in the Cumberland and reform sauces still made today.