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Venison Chops, Puree of Chestnuts
Neatly trim and flatten six venison chops, season all over with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon black pepper. Thoroughly heat a tablespoon melted butter in sautoire, add chops one beside another, cook for five minutes on each side, dress a puree of chestnuts on a hot dish, pyramid-like and arrange chops around. Remove fat from pan, add three tablespoons currant jelly and mix until thoroughly melted. Pour in a gill tomato sauce, mix well, boil for two minutes, pour sauce over chops and serve.
A straightforward saute with a pan sauce; the only awkward parts are the vessel, the archaic liquid measure, and the assumption that venison should be cooked through.
- SautoireA sautoire is a straight-sided shallow saute pan. Any heavy skillet wide enough to hold six chops without crowding will do; use two pans rather than stack them.
- A gillHalf a cup, or 4 fl oz. Here it is tomato sauce, meaning a cooked, seasoned sauce of the Escoffier type rather than modern ketchup or canned pizza sauce.
- Five minutes a side is too longFarmed venison loin chops an inch thick want about 2-3 minutes a side for medium-rare, to an internal 130-135F. Venison is very lean and turns dry and livery past medium; ten minutes total in the pan will leave these flattened chops well done.
- Season and restA teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of pepper for six chops is about right. Rest the meat five minutes off the heat while you build the sauce, and pour any resting juices into the pan.
- The saucePour off the fat, melt the currant jelly over low heat so it does not scorch, then add the tomato sauce and boil briefly to bind. Red currant jelly is the traditional choice; cranberry works but is sweeter and needs less.
- Puree of chestnutsThe book expects a separate recipe: peeled chestnuts simmered in stock or milk until tender, then sieved with butter and cream to a stiff, pipeable mash. Vacuum-packed cooked chestnuts, about 1 lb for six servings, save an hour of peeling.
- YieldSix chops serves three as a main course, or six as one course of a longer menu.
Venison with a sweet-tart red fruit sauce and chestnuts is a fixture of European game cookery, and the pairing of currant jelly with roast or sauteed venison was standard in English and Franco-American kitchens by the nineteenth century. Chestnuts belong to the same seasonal logic: gathered in autumn, they arrived alongside the game. Filippini's International Cook Book (1911) came out of the Delmonico's tradition, where venison was a restaurant luxury rather than a hunter's supper, and the chops here are trimmed, flattened and arranged around a pyramid of puree in the manner of formal service. The all-purpose "tomato sauce" poured over game would strike a modern cook as odd, but tomato sauce was one of the leading sauces of the era, made in quantity and kept on hand.