Venison Steak
Have your gridiron well buttered, and a hot fire. Lay the steaks on the bars and broil rapidly, turning often, not to lose a drop of juice. They will take at least seven minutes to broil. Have ready in a hot chafing dish a piece of butter or a tablespoonful for each pound of venison, a pinch of salt, a little white pepper, a tablespoonful of currant jelly for each pound (and if used), a glass of wine for every four pounds. Lay each steak in the mixture singly, and turn over three times. Cover closely and let heat together, with fresh hot water beneath-unless your lamp is burning for seven minutes before serving.
A broiled steak finished in a butter-and-jelly sauce over a chafing dish. The only real hazard is the arithmetic of the timings: seven minutes on the fire plus seven minutes of holding will take lean venison well past where it is pleasant.
- Gridiron and hot fireA gridiron is a grate set over live coals, so "a hot fire" means direct, high heat — a charcoal grill at its hottest, or a cast-iron grill pan preheated until it just begins to smoke. Under a domestic broiler, use the highest setting and the top rack position.
- The chafing dishThe chafing dish here is a shallow pan over a hot-water bath heated by a spirit lamp — in effect a wide double boiler. A stainless bowl or skillet set over barely simmering water does the same job, and "fresh hot water beneath" simply means topping up the reservoir if there is no flame under it.
- Total cooking timeSeven minutes of hard broiling suits a thick steak of 1 1/2 inches or more. Venison is very lean and turns dry and livery past medium; pull the steaks at 125-130F internal and treat the chafing dish as a warm rest, not further cooking. Thinner cuts want three to four minutes total.
- A glass of wineIn this period a wine glass is roughly 2 fluid ounces, so a glass for every four pounds of meat is a modest splash — about 1/2 cup for a large service. Red wine or port is the usual choice with currant jelly.
- Currant jellyRed currant jelly was the standard sweet-tart foil for game and is still sold; cranberry or a tart redcurrant preserve works the same way. A tablespoon per pound of meat is enough to gloss the sauce, not to sweeten it.
- Buttering the barsButter on the grate burns at broiling heat and contributes little. Oiling the bars with a high-smoke-point fat, or rubbing the steaks themselves, keeps the meat from sticking and tearing when it is turned.
- Turning oftenThe instruction to turn frequently is sound. Repeated turning cooks a lean steak more evenly and reduces the grey band under the crust.
- YieldFigure 6-8 oz of boneless venison per person, so the sauce quantities as written — butter, jelly and salt scaled per pound — cover about two servings per pound.
Venison held a particular place in American cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s: it was still genuinely wild meat, arriving from market hunters and sportsmen rather than farms, and books of this era grouped it under Game alongside quail, canvasback duck and rabbit. The butter-and-currant-jelly finish is borrowed straight from the English game tradition, where sweet-tart fruit jellies have long been served with venison and mutton to offset the leanness and strong flavor of the meat. The chafing dish is the period detail that dates the recipe most precisely — a spirit-lamp table appliance that was fashionable in well-off American households around the turn of the century, used for sauces, creamed dishes and late-supper cookery done in front of guests. Within a generation state game laws and the collapse of commercial hunting moved venison out of the ordinary market, and it did not return in quantity until farmed deer arrived in the later twentieth century.