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November 10
Menu: Haddock au Gratin; Venison Cutlets; Hashed Browned Potatoes; Oyster and Celery Salad; Marrons, a la Creme; Coffee Venison Cutlets-Trim venison cutlets in usual way. Put 4 tablespoons Crisco in saute pan and when hot put in cutlets, seasoned with salt and pepper, fry till brown. Then take out cutlets, put into pan 1/2 tumbler currant jelly to melt, add 2 tablespoons Crisco with 1/2 teaspoon salt, and serve separately with cutlets.
A one-line saute from the Crisco calendar of dinners, with a currant-jelly sauce served alongside rather than poured over. Two things need attention: the doneness of the meat and the stability of the sauce.
- Do not cook it throughFarmed or wild venison loin is almost fat-free and turns dry and liverish past medium-rare. Sear the cutlets hard and pull them at an internal 130-135F, then rest five minutes; "fry till brown" here means brown crust, not cooked-out centre.
- A tumblerA drinking tumbler of the period held roughly 8 fl oz, so half a tumbler of currant jelly is about 1/2 cup, or 5-6 oz by weight. Red currant jelly is almost certainly what is meant, rather than black currant preserve, which is sweeter and seedier.
- Crisco, and what to use insteadThe 1913 product was hydrogenated cottonseed oil, formulated to behave like lard at high heat. Any neutral high-smoke-point fat does the searing job; for the sauce, butter gives a better flavour and mouthfeel than shortening.
- The sauce is a deglazeMelt the jelly in the same pan off high heat so it takes up the browned fond, and whisk the fat in at the end with the pan barely warm. Jelly boiled hard will scorch and set to a candy when it cools, and fat stirred into a boiling sauce splits.
- Worth a splash of acidMelted jelly alone is very sweet. A tablespoon of red wine vinegar, port or the pan juices from the resting meat pulls it into balance without departing from the period's own treatment of venison.
- Trimming"Trim in the usual way" would include taking off the silverskin, which will not render and contracts in the pan, curling the cutlet. Remove it with a thin blade before seasoning.
- YieldThe recipe gives no number of servings; four tablespoons of fat and half a tumbler of jelly suit a small family portion. The recipe directs only that the sauce be served separately from the cutlets, not poured over them.
The Story of Crisco (1913), written for Procter & Gamble by Marion Harris Neil, was published two years after Crisco itself appeared as the first widely marketed hydrogenated vegetable shortening, and its "Calendar of Dinners" exists to prove the new fat could do everything butter, lard and drippings did. That is why a dinner of venison cutlets, of all things, ends up in a shortening pamphlet: game was a seasonal autumn luxury, and putting Crisco in both the saute pan and the sauce boat made the point that it belonged at a good table. The pairing of venison with red currant jelly is an English inheritance, generally traced to the eighteenth-century habit of serving sharp-sweet fruit condiments with roast game; the same logic produced Cumberland sauce, which is essentially this jelly with port, citrus and mustard added.