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Venison Collops
Trim off the skin and sinews from any remains of cold cooked venison, chop fine the flesh and mix with it one-third of the quantity of finely-minced bacon and one teacupful of finely-grated breadcrumbs. Season the mixture to taste with salt, pepper and a few mixed herbs, and bind it well with beaten eggs. When well worked together divide the mixture into small quantities, which roll into balls, flatten them and dip them into beaten egg and then in breadcrumbs. Place a lump of butter in a fryingpan, melt it, put in the collops and fry them until nicely browned on both sides. When cooked drain them, arrange on a dish that has been spread over with a folded napkin, and serve with a sauceboatful of piquant sauce.
A leftovers dish from the Waldorf's game larder: cooked venison reworked into breaded cakes. The whole thing hinges on fat and binding, since twice-cooked venison is bone dry on its own.
- The hinge: keep the baconThe recipe calls for minced bacon equal to one-third the quantity of venison (about 5 oz to 1 lb of meat). Cooked venison has almost no intramuscular fat, and cutting the bacon back leaves you with sandy, crumbling patties.
- TeacupfulTeacup measures were not standardised; a teacupful was variously reckoned at roughly 4 to 6 fluid ounces, so somewhere between half a cup and three-quarters of a cup of fine dry breadcrumbs. Judge by feel: the mass should hold a shape without being pasty.
- Amount of venisonNo quantity is given because this is a scrap dish. About 1 lb of trimmed cooked meat with 5 oz bacon and one to two beaten eggs makes eight collops, enough for four as a light course.
- "Collops"Historically a collop is a thin slice or cutlet of meat. Here the word is borrowed loosely for a chopped-and-formed cake, closer to a croquette than a slice.
- ChoppingChop by hand or pulse very briefly in a food processor. Run it continuously and the cooked meat turns to paste, which fries into a dense puck.
- FryingButter alone browns fast and burns; use butter with a spoonful of neutral oil, or clarified butter, over medium heat. The meat is already cooked, so you are browning the crumb coating and heating the centre through, about 3 to 4 minutes a side.
- Chill before coatingNot in the original, but 30 minutes in the refrigerator firms the formed cakes and keeps the egg-and-crumb coating from sliding off in the pan.
- Piquant sauceMost likely sauce piquante: a brown sauce sharpened with a vinegar-and-shallot reduction and finished with chopped gherkins and herbs (capers in some versions). A good jarred demi-glace reduced with white wine vinegar, shallot and gherkin gets close in ten minutes.
- The folded napkinA period plating convention meant to absorb frying fat at table. A rack or paper towel does the draining now; serve on a warm plate.
Oscar Tschirky's book belongs to an era when large hotel kitchens ran on the same principle as thrifty households, only at scale: nothing that had once been paid for was thrown away. The word collop is old English kitchen vocabulary of uncertain origin; its earliest recorded English sense is fried bacon, or bacon and eggs, and by 1900 the term had drifted to cover almost any small formed cutlet. The dish also reflects how game reached city kitchens then: American venison was still a market commodity, sold openly by dealers before state game laws and the 1900 Lacey Act curtailed commercial hunting, so a hotel could plan menus around it in a way no restaurant can today.