Home › The Principles of Cookery › Venison Steaks, Fried
Venison Steaks, Fried
Cut some steaks half an inch thick from a leg or loin of venison, season with pepper and salt, dip them in flour, and put them in the frying-pan with some hot fat. Cover with a plate or lid till they are brightly browned on one side, then take off the cover, turn them, and let them brown quickly upon the other. Be careful that they are not overdone. Pour a wine-glassful of boiling stock or water into the pan, add a table-spoonful of red currant jelly and a glassful of port or claret, if liked; stir the sauce over the fire for a few minutes, and serve very hot. Probable cost of venison, very uncertain.
A straightforward pan sauce built in the fat the steaks were fried in. The whole thing hangs on not overcooking meat that has almost no internal fat to protect it.
- Doneness is the hingeVenison loin and leg have almost no intramuscular fat and turn dry and liverish past medium. Half-inch steaks need roughly 1.5-2 minutes a side over high heat; pull them at 125-130F and let them rest while you make the sauce.
- The covered panThe recipe covers the first side so the thin steak cooks through while one face colours. In a modern heavy skillet the trapped moisture works against a crust. Leave it uncovered and get the pan properly hot first.
- "Some hot fat"Beef dripping, lard or clarified butter all suit; whole butter will scorch at the heat you want. About 2 tablespoons in a 10-inch pan.
- A wine-glassfulAround 2 fl oz, so 1/4 cup of stock and the same again of port or claret. Beef or game stock gives a better sauce than water.
- Red currant jellyStill sold, and still the standard sweet-acid foil for game in British cooking. If you cannot find it, a tablespoon of tart redcurrant or lingonberry preserve does the same work; grape jelly does not.
- Sauce texture"Stir over the fire for a few minutes" means reduce until it coats a spoon lightly. It will stay thin unless you take it well down or finish it off the heat with a knob of cold butter.
- SourcingThe "very uncertain" cost points to venison's irregular supply: much of it came from private parks and estates as gifts rather than through a steady market, though it was also sold. Farmed red or fallow deer is now sold reliably and is milder and more tender than long-hung wild meat; wild venison may want a shorter cook still.
- YieldTwo steaks per person from a leg, one thick loin steak if the cut is generous. The sauce as written dresses two to three servings.
Cassell's placed frying among the plainest treatments of venison. Much venison reached the table from private parks and estates, a haunch circulating as a gift among the well-connected as well as being bought, which is one reason the book calls the cost uncertain. The pairing of game with red currant jelly and fortified wine was long established in British cookery by the 1880s, and is generally traced to the older practice of serving strong meats with sharp, sweet fruit sauces, verjuice, sour cherries and barberries among them, to cut richness and mask the taste of meat that had been hung a long while.