Home › Cookery › Stewed Venison
Stewed Venison
Cut in tolerably thick slices. Put in an oven with two spoonfuls of water and a piece of lard. Cook till nearly done, then pour off gravy and baste it well with a large spoonful of butter, pepper, and salt.
Stewed Venison. Slice cold venison in a chafing dish and add- A cup of water. A small teacup of red wine. A small teacup of currant jelly. A tablespoonful of butter. A teaspoonful of made mustard. A little yellow pickle. A little chopped celery. A little mushroom catsup. Salt and cayenne pepper to the taste. The same receipt will answer for cold mutton.--Mrs. R.L.O.
Two receipts have run together here: a short method for cooking fresh venison slices, then the chafing-dish hash of cold roast venison that gives the entry its title. Both are worth having, but the second is the one Mrs. R.L.O. signed.
- "An oven" is a pot, not an oven"An oven" may be a pot -- In Virginia kitchens of this period an "oven" can mean a Dutch oven, a heavy lidded pot set on the hearth with coals heaped on the lid, though by the 1870s a stove oven is equally possible. Either way, read the first paragraph as cooking thick slices with a little water and fat, then finishing with butter, pepper and salt.
- The hinge: gentle heat onlyCold venison is already cooked and extremely lean. The chafing dish exists to warm it through in the sauce, not to simmer it; once the slices boil they turn dry and stringy. Bring the sauce to a bare simmer, slide in the meat, and take it off as soon as it is hot.
- Made mustard"Made" mustard means prepared mustard already mixed with liquid, as opposed to dry powder. A sharp English or Dijon-style mustard suits the currant jelly better than a sweet yellow one.
- Yellow pickleA turmeric-and-mustard pickle of cauliflower, cucumber and onion, of the same family as chow-chow and piccalilli, which is the nearest supermarket equivalent. Chop it fine; the receipt says only "a little."
- Mushroom catsupA thin, dark, salty mushroom-and-salt infusion, nothing like tomato ketchup. It is still made commercially in Britain; a teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce plus a little soy gives a comparable savoury depth.
- Teacups and spoonfulsTeacup measures are not standardised in books of this date; a small teacup is generally reckoned at somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 of an 8 oz cup. On that basis, roughly 1 cup water and something over 1/2 cup each of red wine and currant jelly. The jelly will look excessive and is not -- it carries the acid and sweetness that lean game wants.
- Wine and jelly togetherMelt the jelly into the wine and water over the heat before the butter goes in, or it stays in lumps. The receipt specifies only "red wine"; a dry one balances the jelly better than a sweet.
- YieldThe sauce as written will handle roughly a pound of sliced cold venison or mutton, about four modest servings.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from receipts contributed by Virginia housewives, belongs to a tradition in which venison was household meat rather than a delicacy: deer were shot on or near the property, roasted in quantity, and the remains dealt with over the following days. That is what this receipt is for. The chafing dish -- a shallow pan over a spirit lamp -- let cold meat be finished at the table or on the sideboard, and it was a common vessel for breakfast and supper dishes of reheated meat. The sauce of red wine, currant jelly and mustard belongs to the sweet-sharp family of English game sauces, of which Cumberland is the best known, set against flesh with almost no fat in it; the mushroom catsup and yellow pickle are the Anglo-Virginian additions, both staples of a nineteenth-century store closet. The closing note that the same treatment answers for cold mutton suggests this is a method for leftovers first and a game receipt second.