Venison, Stewed
INGREDIENTS for dish for 12 or 14 persons. -A shoulder of venison, a few slices of mutton fat, 2 glasses of port wine, pepper and allspice to taste, 1½ pint of weak stock or gravy, 1/2 teaspoonful of whole pepper, teaspoonful of whole allspice. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 2d. to 1s. 6d. per lb.
Hang the venison till tender; take out the bone, flatten the meat with a rollingpin, and place over it a few slices of mutton fat, which have been previously soaked for 2 or 3½ hours in port wine; sprinkle these with a little allspice and pepper, roll the meat up, and bind and tie it securely. Put it into a stewpan with the bone and the above proportion of weak stock or gravy, whole allspice, black pepper and port wine; cover the lid down closely, and simmer very gently from 3 to 4 hours, When quite tender, take off the tape, and dish the meat; strain the gravy over it, and send it to table with red-currant jelly.
Unless the joint is very fat, the above is the best mode of cooking it.
VOL-AU-VENT.
TIME.-3 to 4 hours.
SEASONABLE.-Buck venison, from June to Michaelmas; doe venison form November to the end of January.
A boned, stuffed and rolled shoulder braised in port and stock. The method is sound; most of what needs translating is units, the vanished butcher's work, and one stray line of type.
- The hinge: fat, not heatVenison shoulder is almost fat-free and will dry to string if hurried. The port-soaked mutton fat rolled inside is the whole point of the recipe; if mutton fat is unavailable, hard beef suet, pork back fat or thin-cut fatty bacon does the same job. Keep the liquid at a bare tremble, never a boil.
- Glasses of portA wineglassful was conventionally reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so 2 glasses is roughly 4-5 fl oz (½ to ⅔ cup), plus whatever the fat absorbs while soaking. A ruby port arguably suits it better than a tawny.
- 1½ pint of stockImperial pints, so 30 imperial fl oz, about 3½ US cups. "Weak" looks deliberate: a strong reduced stock may oversalt over three to four hours of covered simmering.
- Boning and tyingAsk the butcher to bone the shoulder and keep the bone for the pot. "Bind and tie securely" meant cotton tape; butcher's twine at 1-inch intervals is the modern equivalent, and the recipe's later "take off the tape" means untie before slicing.
- Whole spicesWhole allspice berries and whole black peppercorns go in the braise and are strained out at the end, which is why the gravy is passed through a sieve before serving. Ground spice here would cloud and coarsen it.
- Stewpan or ovenA tightly lidded stewpan on the lowest burner works, but a heavy casserole at 300F in the oven holds the temperature far more evenly over three to four hours. Check at three; a fork should meet no resistance.
- The stray line"VOL-AU-VENT" in the middle of the text is a stray heading or caption carried over from the original page layout, not part of the recipe. Ignore it.
- Hanging and sourcing"Hang the venison till tender" assumed a cold larder and a household used to judging game. Farmed or park venison from a butcher is already aged under refrigeration and needs no further hanging.
- Yield and servingTwelve to fourteen is optimistic for one shoulder as a main course; a 4-5 lb boned shoulder will serve eight generously, more if it is one of several dishes. Red-currant jelly on the side is not optional in the period style, and its acidity genuinely helps the rich gravy.
Venison in Beeton's day came from private parks and estates, and the seasons quoted here, buck from June to Michaelmas (29 September) and doe from November to the end of January, follow the English sporting calendar rather than the market. The listed cost of 1s. 2d. to 1s. 6d. a pound put it far above beef, which is one reason the book bothers to distinguish this stewed treatment for a lean shoulder from the roasting given to a haunch. The pairing with port and red-currant jelly is often traced to eighteenth-century English practice and certainly survived into Victorian service, sweetness and acid set against dry, dark meat, and the barding with soaked mutton fat is the same logic applied inside the joint. Beeton's closing remark, that unless the joint is very fat this is the best way to cook it, is a practical judgement about park deer of variable condition, and it still holds for lean shoulder today.