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Fawn, Roasted
The hind-quarter is the best, but a small fawn may be roasted whole, larded, stuffed, and trussed like a hare. Cover with a buttered paper, and baste until half done, then remove the larding and paper, and baste the meat liberally till done. Serve with a sauce as follows. Take half a pint of mutton gravy, and simmer any of the venison trimmings in it; strain, and add a small pot of currant jelly, a table-spoonful of powdered sugar, and a large glass of port or claret. Serve hot in a tureen. Time to roast fawn, one hour and a half; to simmer gravy with jelly, etc., five minutes.
A Victorian country-house roast written for a spit or a hearth-side jack, with a sweet-sharp wine sauce that is still the standard accompaniment to venison. The practical work is in sourcing the meat and in not overcooking it.
- SourcingFawn is not sold commercially, and taking one is prohibited in many jurisdictions under season and size rules. Farmed venison from a young animal, or a leg or saddle of roe deer, is the working substitute; ask a game dealer for the youngest carcass they carry.
- Temperature, not timeThe hour and a half assumes roasting before an open fire, and the recipe does not say whether it applies to the whole small fawn or to the hind-quarter. Any lean young venison should be cooked to an internal temperature of 130-135F for medium-rare and rested; past about 145F it dries and tightens no matter how much you baste.
- Oven settingThe recipe assumes spit or hearth roasting and gives no oven temperature. In an oven, 450F for the first fifteen minutes to colour, then 325F to finish, works for a leg or saddle.
- Larding and the buttered paperLarding means threading strips of pork back fat through the meat with a larding needle. If you have no needle, bard instead: tie sheets of fatback or unsmoked bacon over the surface. The buttered paper was plain kitchen paper; parchment is the modern stand-in, and the recipe has it removed part-way through so the outside browns.
- Half a pint of mutton gravyTen fluid ounces in British measure, about 1 1/4 cups. "Mutton gravy" here is a strong reduced lamb or venison stock, not a thickened flour gravy; a good dark lamb stock is the closest thing on a modern shelf.
- A small pot of currant jellyThe capacity of a Victorian jelly pot is not fixed; roughly 1/3 to 1/2 cup of redcurrant jelly is a reasonable reading. Taste before adding the spoonful of powdered sugar; it is often unnecessary.
- A large glass of portPerhaps 3 to 4 fluid ounces. Add it with the jelly and give it the few minutes' simmering the recipe allows, which will take off the raw alcohol edge.
- Stuffing and trussing"Like a hare" points to the usual sort of plain forcemeat -- breadcrumbs, suet, herbs, lemon zest -- packed into the cavity with the body sewn or skewered shut. With a leg or saddle rather than a whole animal, skip the stuffing and serve the forcemeat as separate balls.
- YieldA 4-5 lb leg of young venison serves six to eight, with the sauce sent to table hot in a tureen as directed. Venison sets to unpleasant tallow on a cold plate, so warm the plates well.
Fawn appears in Cassell's at a time when households might still be sent a whole beast from a deer park, an estate cull, or a sporting friend, and needed to know what to do with it. The sauce is the older half of the recipe: sweetened, wine-spiked gravies for game descend from the medieval English taste for sour-sweet sauces with meat, and by the nineteenth century that tradition had narrowed to the near-invariable pairing of venison with redcurrant jelly and port, a combination still standard in British kitchens. Instructing the cook to truss and stuff a fawn "like a hare" is telling: it treats a very young deer as belonging to the general class of small furred game rather than to butchery proper, and reflects a period when the domestic cook was expected to handle whatever arrived from the country whole and undressed. The dish has effectively vanished from modern cookery.