If you wish a plainer dish, omit the wine and jelly; pepper and salt the steaks when broiled, and lay butter upon them in the proportion I have stated, letting them stand between hot dishes five minutes before they go to table, turning them three times in the gravy that runs from them to mingle with the melted butter. Delicious steaks corresponding to the shape of mutton chops are cut from the loin and rack.
Venison Cutlets. ✠
Trim the cutlets nicely, and make gravy of the refuse bits in the proportion of a cup of cold water to half a pound of venison. Put in bones, scraps of fat, etc., and set on in a saucepan to stew while you make ready the cutlets. Lard with slips of fat salt pork a quarter of an inch apart, and projecting slightly on either side. When the gravy has stewed an hour, strain and let it cool. Lay the cutlets in a saucepan, with a few pieces of young onion on each. Allow one onion to four or five pounds. It should not be flavored strongly with this. Scatter also a little minced parsley and thyme between the layers of meat, with pepper, and a very little nutmeg. The pork lardoons will salt sufficiently. When you have put in all your meat, pour in the gravy, which should be warm—not hot. Stew steadily twenty minutes, take up the cutlets and lay in a frying-pan in which you have heated just enough butter to prevent them from burning. Fry five minutes very quickly, turning the cutlets over and over to brown, without drying them. Lay in order in a chafing-dish, and have ready the gravy to pour over them without delay. This should be done by straining the liquor left in the saucepan and returning to the fire, with the addition of a tablespoonful of currant jelly, a teaspoonful Worcestershire or other piquant sauce, and half a glass of wine. Thicken with browned flour, boil up well and pour over the cutlets. Let all stand together in a hot dish five minutes before serving. Venison which is not fat or juicy enough for roasting makes a relishable dish cooked after this receipt.
Hashed Venison. ✠
The remains of cold roast venison—especially a stuffed shoulder—may be used for this dish, and will give great satisfaction to cook and consumers. Slice the meat from the bones. Put these with the fat and other scraps in a saucepan, with a large teacupful of cold water, a small onion—one of the button kind, minced, parsley and thyme, pepper and salt, and three or four whole cloves. Stew for an hour. Strain and return to the saucepan, with whatever gravy was left from the roast, a tablespoonful currant jelly, one of tomato or mushroom catsup, a teaspoonful of anchovy sauce, and a little browned flour. Boil for three minutes; lay in the venison, cut into slices about an inch long, and let all heat over the fire for eight minutes, but do not allow the hash to boil. Stir frequently, and when it is smoking hot, turn into a deep-covered dish.
Roast Fawn.
Clean, wash thoroughly; stuff with a good force-meat made of bread-crumbs, chopped pork, pepper and salt, a little grated nutmeg, the juice of a lemon. Moisten with water and cream, bind with beaten egg and melted butter. Sew up the fawn, turning the legs under, and binding close to the body. Cover with thin slices of fat pork, bound on with pack-thread, crossing in every direction, and roast at a quick fire. Allow twenty-two minutes to a pound. Twenty minutes before it is dished, remove the pork, and set down the fawn to brown, basting with melted butter. At the last, dredge with flour, let this brown, froth with butter, and serve.
Garnish with abundance of curled parsley, dotted with drops of red currant jelly. A kid can be roasted in the same way—also hares and rabbits.
Venison Pasty. ✠
This is a name dear to the heart of the Englishman since the days when Friar Tuck feasted the disguised Cœur de Lion upon it in the depths of Sherwood Forest, until the present generation. In this country it is comparatively little known; but I recommend it to those who have never yet been able to make venison “tolerably eatable.”