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Venison Steak Broiled
Take the leg and cut slices from it, having a quick, clear fire. Turn them constantly. They should be served underdone. Grease both sides of the steak; sprinkle salt and pepper over the venison, garnish with parsley and accompanying it by a jelly sauce.
Barely a paragraph, and it assumes you know how to manage a live coal fire. The two things that carry this dish are heat and fat: venison leg is very lean, and it wants to be seared hard and pulled early.
- "A quick, clear fire"Clear means the coals have burned down past flame and smoke to steady red heat. The nearest modern equivalent is a grill run at high heat, or a broiler with the element well preheated; the recipe itself gives no temperature.
- Cut thicknessThe original leaves it open. Slices from the leg (the haunch, giving what a butcher now calls top round or the sirloin tip) should be cut across the grain about 3/4 to 1 inch thick. Thinner slices overcook before they colour; thicker ones need a cooler second stage.
- "Served underdone" is the hingeVenison has almost no intramuscular fat, so it goes dry and livery the moment it passes medium. Pull it at 125-130F for rare to medium-rare, which for a 3/4-inch steak is roughly 2-3 minutes per side over clear coals.
- Greasing both sidesNot optional decoration. Brush with melted butter, beef suet or a neutral oil before and during cooking, since there is no fat cap to render and baste the meat. Larding or barding lean venison with salt pork appears elsewhere in period game cookery, though this recipe does not call for it.
- Turning constantlySound advice over open coals, where one side scorches fast. Under a broiler, turn once at the halfway point instead so the surface has time to brown.
- Seasoning after, not beforeSeasoning -- The recipe's order is ambiguous: salt and pepper are mentioned in the same breath as the greasing, the parsley and the sauce, so it is not clear whether the meat is seasoned on the fire or as it is dished. Either way, season generously, as lean venison needs it.
- Jelly sauceIn American books of this era this usually means red currant jelly, melted and warmed until pourable, sometimes with a little port. Tart apple or a sharp crab-apple jelly does the same job.
- Rest and yieldLet the slices sit five minutes off the heat before serving; the muscle is tight and will lose its juices if cut straight away. Figure 6-8 oz per person, which is about 2 lb of leg for four.
Venison is treated here as game meat because it still arrived in the kitchen as a whole haunch or saddle rather than in trays. Deer was market meat in much of the United States well into the nineteenth century, and cookbooks of the period treat it as a familiar roast; by the time this book appeared, state game laws and seasons had begun to push it toward being an occasional treat. The pairing with currant jelly is inherited from English game cookery, where a sweet-tart preserve was the standard foil for dark, lean meat, a logic often compared to mint with lamb and applesauce with pork. One note for the present: wild venison from regions where chronic wasting disease is present should be handled according to current state wildlife guidance, and farmed venison is what most cooks will actually buy.