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Fried Venison Steak
Cut the steaks from the breast, rub them over with a mixture of salt and pepper, dip in wheat flour or rolled crackers and fry a rich brown on both sides in one-quarter pound of hot butter. Put them on a dish and place a tin cover over them to keep them warm. Dredge one heaping teaspoon of flour into the butter in the pan and stir till brown (but not burned); pour in a small teacup of boiling water with one tablespoon of currant jelly dissolved in it, stir a few minutes, strain the gravy and pour it over the meat.
A straightforward pan-fry with a quick pan gravy. The only real difficulty is that venison is far leaner than beef and punishes the long browning this instruction implies.
- Do not cook it throughVenison steak has almost no intramuscular fat and turns dry and livery past medium. Sear hard and pull it at 125-130F internal, which on a half-inch steak is roughly two minutes a side.
- "Steaks from the breast"Modern butchery does not sell venison breast steaks; the brisket and flank of a deer are braising or grinding cuts. Use loin (backstrap) or slices from the top round of the haunch, cut about half an inch thick.
- A quarter pound of butterThat is one stick, or 4 oz. Whole butter at searing heat will brown and then blacken before the meat is done; use clarified butter or half butter and half neutral oil, and 2-3 tablespoons is ample for two or three steaks.
- Rolled crackersSoda or water crackers crushed fine with a rolling pin. Unsalted saltines or plain cracker meal give the same result; panko is coarser and behaves differently.
- A small teacupPeriod teacup measures were not standardised, and are reckoned anywhere from about 4 to 6 fluid ounces, so read this as somewhere between half and two-thirds of a cup. Add it gradually to the roux so the gravy does not seize.
- The jelly gravyDissolve the currant jelly in the boiling water before it goes into the pan, as written; dropped in cold it sits in a lump and scorches. Redcurrant is traditional, but a tart red plum or lingonberry preserve works the same way.
- StrainingStraining removes the flour lumps and any burnt crumb from the coating. Do it, then taste for salt, since the jelly pushes the sauce sweet.
- YieldAs written the gravy suits two to three steaks, enough for two or three servings. Rest the meat while you make it and pour any resting juices into the pan.
This recipe comes from an era when American game cookery was moving from the hunter's camp into the middle-class kitchen, and the sweet-sour jelly sauce is the marker of that shift: currant jelly with venison is a borrowing from English and Franco-English practice, where sharp fruit was the standing accompaniment to lean, strongly flavoured meat. The gravy here is a plain brown roux built in the frying pan, so the only thing making it "venison" is the jelly. That a general-purpose household cookbook carried venison at all reflects how much wild meat still reached city markets in the period; state game laws and the collapse of commercial market hunting in the following decades pushed deer back into the hands of hunters.