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Venison Steaks, Broiled
Cut the steaks an inch thick from the leg or the loin of venison. Make the gridiron hot, rub the bars with a little suet, and place the steaks upon it over a clear fire. Turn them every two minutes to preserve the gravy. Make the steak dish very hot; put on it for each pound of venison an ounce of butter, a table-spoonful of liquid red currant jelly, a table-spoonful of wine, or, as a substitute, boiling stock or water, and a little pepper and salt. Turn the broiled steaks in the sauce once or twice, and serve very hot. By way of variety the butter only may be put into the dish under the steaks, and stewed mushrooms may be served with the venison; or thin slices of lemon may be laid on the steaks for the last two or three minutes that they are being broiled, and then served with them. Time, from twenty to twenty-five minutes to broil the steaks. Probable cost of venison, very uncertain.
A sound method with one badly outdated instruction. Everything here works on a charcoal grill or a ridged cast-iron pan; the sauce is assembled in the serving dish rather than a pan.
- The timing is the problemTwenty to twenty-five minutes will turn an inch-thick venison steak grey and dry. Venison is very lean and has almost no intramuscular fat to keep it moist, so cook to rare or medium-rare — roughly 3 minutes a side over a hot fire, 120-130F at the centre — then rest it. Whatever the original figure was aiming at, it will cook an inch-thick steak well through.
- A clear fireThis means charcoal or wood that has burned down past the smoke and flame to a steady bed of glowing coals, with no flare-ups to blacken the meat. A gas grill on high or a cast-iron grill pan preheated until a drop of water skitters gives the same result.
- Suet on the barsBeef suet rubbed on the hot gridiron keeps the lean meat from sticking. Any high-smoke-point fat does the job; a scrap of beef fat or a brushing of oil is equivalent.
- Turning every two minutesFrequent turning does not seal in gravy — that idea has long been disproved — but it does cook lean meat more evenly and reduce the grey band under the crust. Worth keeping for that reason, though with a total time of six minutes you will get only two or three turns.
- The hot dish mattersVenison sets and stiffens the moment it cools, so the heated serving dish is doing real work. Warm it to about 200F in the oven, and use a shallow dish so the butter, jelly and wine emulsify as you turn the steaks in them.
- Liquid red currant jellyOrdinary redcurrant jelly warmed until pourable. If you cannot find it, use a tart jelly rather than a sweet jam; the point is acidity against the rich, faintly liver-like flavour of the meat. A tablespoon per pound of meat is not much, and it should not read as sweet.
- The wineThe book specifies only "wine"; port or a dry red suits the dish. It also offers boiling stock or water as a substitute, without saying why. Since the wine is not cooked off, use something you would drink.
- YieldReckon 6-8 oz of boneless venison per person, so a pound of steaks with an ounce of butter serves two.
The closing note that the cost of venison is "very uncertain" reflects the handling of meat that arrived unpredictably in a Victorian household. Deer in late nineteenth-century Britain came from private parks and estates rather than butchers' regular stock, which may explain the recipe's careful hedging: wine if you have it, boiling stock or water if you do not. The pairing with redcurrant jelly is old and durable, and is generally traced to the broader European habit of setting sharp fruit against game and lean dark meat; it survives today in the jelly served with roast venison and in Cumberland sauce. The instruction to turn every two minutes "to preserve the gravy" reflects the searing theory of the period, now known to be wrong about sealing in juices, though frequent turning has since been rehabilitated on quite different grounds.