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Gravy for Venison
Take two or three pounds of loin of mutton, remove all the fat and cut it into rather thick slices, grill them for a minute or two on one side only so as to slightly brown them, put them in a stewpan, pour over one quart of water, place the lid on the pan and simmer at the side of the fire for an hour; then take off the lid and boil until the liquor is reduced to half its original quantity. Season with salt only when wanted for use.
This is a mutton essence rather than a thickened gravy: no flour, no butter, just meat reduced into its own liquor. It is a component recipe, meant to be held ready and finished at the moment of service.
- What "gravy" means hereIn a professional kitchen of this period gravy is a strong meat liquor, not a flour-bound sauce. Expect roughly 2 cups of thin, intensely savoury essence, which may set to a light jelly when cold.
- Mutton for venisonThe mutton is deliberate. Its gaminess bridges the gap to venison in a way beef stock will not; lamb shoulder or neck is the closest supermarket substitute, though it is milder and younger than the mutton Oscar had.``
- Trim the fat, seriouslyMutton fat is the strongest-tasting part of the animal and does not emulsify into a clear liquor. Remove it before grilling, and skim again once the reduction has cooled.``
- Grill one side onlyThe browning is for flavour, not for cooking the meat through. A dry cast-iron pan or a hot broiler for one to two minutes is enough; a hard sear on both sides will make the finished liquor taste scorched rather than meaty.
- "Simmer at the side of the fire"On a coal range the side of the fire was the gentle zone. On a modern hob this means the lowest setting that keeps the liquid at a bare tremble, around 185F, for the covered hour. A rolling boil at this stage clouds the liquor.
- The reductionUncover and boil hard to take 1 quart down to about 1 pint. Judge by volume, not time; a wide pan will do it considerably faster than a narrow stewpan.
- Salt at the end, as writtenThis is the hinge. Salting before reduction concentrates the salt along with everything else, so a liquor seasoned at the start will be roughly twice as salty by the end. Season only in the portion you are about to serve.
- Yield and useAbout 2 cups, enough to sauce venison for six to eight. Spoon it over the meat as it is, or mount it with a knob of cold butter or a spoonful of redcurrant jelly off the heat. It keeps four days refrigerated and freezes well in ice-cube trays.
Oscar Tschirky's book catalogues the working parts of a large hotel kitchen, and this is one of them: a small-batch essence kept on hand so that a plate of venison could be finished to order without waiting for anything. The practice of building a sauce for one meat out of another is old, and mutton was often paired with game in nineteenth-century English and Anglo-American cookery because it supplied depth and a faint gaminess that beef could not. Mutton was in any case far more common on American tables in 1896, when Oscar was at the Waldorf, than it has been for a century since. Venison then was still sold legally through markets, before the game laws of the early 1900s largely ended commercial traffic in wild game.