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Broiled Venison Steak
Follow recipe for Broiled Beefsteak. Serve with Maître d'Hôtel Butter. Venison should always be cooked rare. Venison Steaks, Sautéd, Cumberland Sauce Cut venison steaks in circular pieces and use trimmings for the making of stock. Sauté steaks in hot buttered fryingpan and serve with Cumberland Sauce. Soak two tablespoons citron, cut in julienne-shaped pieces, two tablespoons glaced cherries, and one tablespoon Sultana raisins, in Port wine for several hours. Drain and cook fruit five minutes in one-third cup Port wine. Add one-half tumbler currant jelly, and, as soon as jelly is dissolved, add one and one-third cups Brown Sauce, and two tablespoons shredded almonds.
Venison Steak, Chestnut Sauce Wipe steak, sprinkle with salt and pepper, place on a greased broiler, and broil five minutes. Remove to hot platter and pour over Chestnut Sauce. Fry one-half onion and six slices carrot, cut in small pieces, in two tablespoons butter, five minutes, add three tablespoons flour, and stir until well browned; then add one and one-half cups Brown Stock, a sprig of parsley, a bit of bay leaf, eight peppercorns, and one teaspoon salt. Let simmer twenty minutes, strain, then add three tablespoons Madeira wine, one cup boiled French chestnuts, and one tablespoon butter.
Three treatments of venison steak in one entry, all built on the same premise: the meat is lean, it cooks fast, and the sauce carries the sweetness. The sauces assume a stocked professional larder, so most of the modernizing work is in sourcing.
- Cook it rare and mean itVenison has almost no intramuscular fat, so it dries and turns liver-like past medium-rare. Pull the steaks at 125-130F internal and rest them; the five-minute broil in the chestnut version assumes a thin cut over very hot coals.
- "Broiler" means a gridironIn 1896 this is a hinged wire grill set over a hot coal fire. The nearest modern equivalent is a ripping-hot cast-iron pan or a charcoal grill, not the overhead element in an oven, which browns too slowly for a cut this lean.
- Brown Sauce and Brown StockBoth are cross-references to the book's own basics: a browned-roux sauce built on brown stock, and a stock from browned beef and bones. A good reduced beef or veal stock, and a demi-glace loosened with stock, will stand in for them.
- Half a tumbler of currant jellyA tumbler in this period is a straight-sided drinking glass of roughly 8 fl oz, so read this as about half a cup of jelly. It is the sweet-tart backbone of the Cumberland sauce; redcurrant jelly, not jam.
- CitronCandied citron peel, the same thing that goes into fruitcake, sold in blocks. Not the citron fruit sold fresh, and not lemon peel, though candied lemon peel is the closest substitute.
- Sultanas and glacé cherriesSultanas are golden raisins. Glacé cherries here are the candied kind; the bright red cocktail cherry sold today is a different and much sweeter product.
- French chestnutsLarge sweet chestnuts, boiled and peeled. Vacuum-packed cooked chestnuts are an honest shortcut; simmer them briefly in the strained sauce so they take up flavor without breaking apart.
- Strain, then fortifyThe Madeira goes in after the sauce is strained and off the hard boil, so its aroma survives.
- YieldThe Cumberland sauce makes roughly two cups and the chestnut sauce a little more, each enough for four to six steaks.
Fannie Farmer put venison in the game chapter at a moment when American deer meat was passing out of the hunter's kitchen and into the restaurant's. Market hunting had thinned deer populations badly by the 1890s, and state after state was closing seasons and banning the sale of wild game, so venison reaching a Boston kitchen was as likely to be park-raised or imported as shot locally. The two sauces show where the fashion came from: Cumberland sauce, generally traced to English service and named for a duke, and a Madeira-and-chestnut brown sauce out of the French repertoire both belong to the grand hotel dining room rather than the farmhouse. The pairing of lean dark game with something sweet and fruited is much older than either, and rests on the same instinct that puts currant jelly beside a saddle of mutton.