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Venison Cutlets (Prepare a mixture of one)
Prepare a mixture of one cupful of vinegar, two tablespoonfuls of currant jelly, one small onion chopped fine, one sprig of parsley, six cloves, a blade of mace, bunch of sweet herbs, and the juice of one lemon. Heat slowly to the boiling point, boil seven minutes. When cold, pour it over the meat and let stand over night. Next day lift out the cutlets, wipe dry, lard them with small strips of pork, broil over a quick fire, and serve with a brown sauce to which has been added one-fourth its quantity of currant jelly and half as much port wine.
A straightforward marinate-and-broil treatment for venison chops, written when venison was leaner, older and stronger-tasting than most farmed meat sold today. The marinade is the whole point; the cooking is a matter of minutes.
- The hinge: do not overcookVenison loin and rib cutlets have almost no intramuscular fat and go dry and livery past medium-rare. Broil hot and fast, 2-3 minutes a side for a cutlet about an inch thick, and pull at 125-130F internal. "A quick fire" means the broiler at full heat or coals you can hold a hand over for only two seconds.
- Marinade quantityOne cup of vinegar plus a lemon is a sharp, thin bath. It is enough for perhaps 4 to 6 cutlets in a close-fitting dish or a zip bag; in a wide pan the meat will sit half-covered. Turn the cutlets once during the night rather than scaling the liquid up.
- A blade of maceMace is the lacy outer covering (aril) of the nutmeg, sold in whole "blades" or ground. A blade is small: figure somewhere between a quarter and a half teaspoon of ground mace, depending on size. The recipe does not say whether to strain the whole spices out before pouring the marinade over the meat.
- Bunch of sweet herbsThe period shorthand for a small bundle of thyme, parsley and a bay leaf, sometimes with marjoram or savory. Tie it with string so it lifts out cleanly.
- LardingThreading strips of fatback through the meat with a larding needle compensates for venison's leanness. If you have no needle, drape thin sheets of fatback or unsmoked bacon over the cutlets, or brush generously with clarified butter; a wrapped cutlet will not take a broiler's char, so remove the fat for the last minute.
- Wipe dry, and mean itA wet surface steams instead of browning and the vinegar residue will scorch bitter under high heat. Blot hard with paper towels and leave the cutlets uncovered at room temperature for 20 minutes before they go under the flame.
- The sauce"Brown sauce" here is an espagnole or a reduced demi-glace; a good reduced venison or beef stock, lightly thickened, does the same work. To one cup, add a quarter cup of currant jelly and two tablespoons of port, and simmer until the jelly dissolves and the sauce coats a spoon.
- YieldFigure two cutlets, about 6 oz of trimmed meat, per person. The marinade quantity here suits roughly two to three servings.
Marinating venison in a spiced vinegar overnight is much older than this book: the sharp bath is usually understood to have served as a preservative as much as a seasoning, softening and sweetening meat from wild deer that had hung for days and might be tough or gamy. By the turn of the century the practice had hardened into convention, and American cookbooks reproduced it for venison regardless of whether the meat needed it. The currant jelly is the other fixed point. Red currant jelly with game is generally traced to English kitchens, where it accompanied venison and mutton as a matter of course, and it appears twice here, once in the marinade and again in the sauce with port. The recipe assumes a household receiving a haunch from a hunter or a market that still sold wild-shot meat, a situation that state game laws and the decline of commercial market hunting largely closed off in the early twentieth century.