HASHED VENISON

Cold cooked venison
1 small or button onion
Parsley
Thyme
Pepper
Salt
3-4 whole cloves
1 tbs. currant jelly
1 tbs. catsup, either tomato or mushroom
1 tsp. anchovy sauce
Browned flour for thickening

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 [bones] 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.

Common Sense in the Household by Marion Harland, New York, 1871

Comment: It is interesting that a recipe calling for venison would pop up in a book from 1871, when cooking writers earlier in the century noted that the meat was beginning to vanish from city marketplaces as settlements expanded and "the frontier" was pushed farther and farther west. The advent of the railroad and refrigerated cars for shipment of produce and meat may have caused the change. On the other hand the recipe might simply have been cribbed from another, earlier book, a custom just as common in the cookbook-writing world then as now. The "catsup" called for here, even the tomato version, is not quite the same sauce as we know it today, but everything else is quite straightforward.

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