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To Hash Calf's Head Brown (About fifteen minutes then)
about fifteen minutes, then carefully skim off the fat, and flavour the gravy with salt and pepper, walnut and mushroom ketchup, and half a teacupful of port-wine. Thicken with flour and butter, and just boil it up before serving. Send it to table very hot.
Another. Cut the venison in small slices, and lay them in a saucepan, pour on them some good gravy or stock, flavoured with Worcestershire or Christopher North's sauce, and let them stand a quarter of an hour, then place the saucepan on the fire, and very gradually bring it nearly to a boil, serve immediately. A plainer Hash of Venison.-Stew the bones and trimmings with mutton or other bones, a slice or two of carrot, a few savoury herbs, and a quart of water or meat boilings, till reduced to one-half. Strain, and when cool, clear it of all the fat, thicken with flour and butter, or the brown roux (par. 278), or with arrowroot; flavour with mushroom and walnut ketchup, salt, and pepper.
RISSOLES. 561. Take out the inside of small rolls; take mutton or chicken-if the former, moisten with gravy or stock; if the latter, with white sauce. The meat must be cut as for patties; season to the taste; fill the inside with the meat, then put the little bit you cut off the top of the roll on again; tie it round with thread. Beat up an egg with a little cream, and dip them in; strew with fine bread-crumbs, and salamander them all over, or else fry them in butter; garnish with a little fried parsley.
What survives here is Victorian second-day cookery: cold roast venison reheated in its own strengthened gravy, plus a rissole made inside a hollowed bread roll. The governing rule for the hash is that the meat must never boil.
- Do not boil the meatSliced cooked venison toughens if brought to a boil. Bring the gravy to just below a simmer, slide the slices in, and hold them there only until heated through.
- TeacupfulA Victorian teacupful is usually reckoned at about a gill, some 4 to 5 fl oz, smaller than a modern mug. Half a teacupful of port is therefore roughly 2 to 2 1/2 fl oz, about 4 to 5 tablespoons. The recipe gives no yield.
- Walnut and mushroom ketchupNeither is the tomato product. Mushroom ketchup is a thin, dark, salty mushroom extract still sold by British specialists; walnut ketchup is made from green walnuts and is harder to find. A teaspoon of either goes a long way; anchovy essence or a dash of soy plus Worcestershire is the nearest substitute.
- Christopher North's sauceA spiced, port-based Scottish table sauce that appears in nineteenth-century cookery books and is now effectively gone. Worcestershire, which the recipe offers as an alternative, is the practical choice.
- Flour and butter, or rouxThe thickening is a beurre manié or a cooked brown roux. For a pint of gravy allow about 1 oz each of flour and butter. If using arrowroot instead, slake it in cold liquid and add off the heat, since it thins if held at a boil.
- The plainer hash stockA quart of water with bones and trimmings reduced by half gives about a pint of gravy; the recipe states no yield. "Meat boilings" means the cooking liquid saved from a boiled joint, which will already be salty; taste before seasoning.
- Salamander the rissolesA salamander was an iron plate heated red and held over food to brown it. Use a broiler at high heat, watching closely, or take the recipe's own alternative and shallow-fry the crumbed rolls in butter.
- Thread and stuffed rollsUse plain, close-crumbed dinner rolls rather than airy modern ones, or they collapse when dipped in egg and cream. Cotton kitchen string is the modern equivalent of the thread, and must be cut away before serving.