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Roebuck, Jugged
Cut a breast of roebuck into small chops, fry these with three or four slices of good bacon in butter till they are lightly browned, then pour off the liquor, and mix flour with it to make a roux (see ROUX). Moisten this with as much good stock as will cover the pieces of roebuck, and add four or five onions with half a dozen cloves stuck in them, three or four inches of thin lemon-rind, a bunch of sweet herbs, and a little pepper and salt; a few mushrooms may be added if liked. Put all into a stewpan, cover closely that no steam may escape, and when the liquor has boiled, draw the pan to the side, and let its contents simmer gently until done enough. Put the meat on a dish, arrange the vegetables round it, pour the sauce over, and serve very hot. Time to simmer the meat, about two hours. Probable cost, 1s. 4d. to 2s. per pound.
A plain braise of venison in a spiced brown sauce. Nothing here is difficult, but the cut named at the top is the part most likely to need rethinking.
- Roebuck, and what to buy insteadRoebuck is the European roe deer, sold through game dealers in Britain and Europe and essentially unavailable in North America. Any venison works: use about 2 lb of shoulder, neck or shank cut into chunks rather than loin or leg, which are too lean for a two-hour simmer.
- "Breast" of a small deerThe breast of a roe is the thin belly and rib section, leaner than lamb breast and not a chop in the modern sense. "Small chops" most likely means short lengths of rib cut across the bone. Boneless shoulder cubes behave much the same way and are easier to source.
- The roux is the hingePour off the fat from the pan, then whisk the flour into it and cook it until it smells nutty and turns the colour of a hazelnut shell before any stock goes in. Undercooked flour here tends to give a pasty sauce that simmering only partly corrects. Roughly 2 tbsp fat to 2 tbsp flour per pint of stock.
- Add stock graduallyThe instruction to moisten with enough stock to cover assumes you will do it in stages, whisking smooth each time. All at once into a hot roux gives lumps.
- "Draw the pan to the side"On a coal range this moved the pan off the hottest plate to a bare simmer. On a modern hob, bring to a boil, then hold at the lowest setting that keeps an occasional bubble; or transfer covered to a 300F oven for the two hours.
- Sweet herbs and lemon-rindA bunch of sweet herbs is close to a bouquet garni: parsley stalks, thyme and a bay leaf tied together, though period bunches often took in marjoram or savory too. Pare the lemon-rind with no white pith attached, and lift both it and the herbs out before serving, along with any cloves that have escaped their onions.
- Cloves in the onionsSticking the cloves into whole peeled onions is not decoration; it lets you retrieve them. Half a dozen cloves is assertive seasoning for a sauce this size, but in keeping with game.
- MushroomsIf you add them, brown them separately and stir them in for the last half hour. Two hours in the sauce reduces them to grey threads.
- Yield and servingTwo pounds of meat serves four. The sauce is thin-bodied by modern taste; reduce it uncovered for ten minutes after the meat comes out if you want it to coat. Redcurrant jelly and something starchy to absorb the sauce are the traditional accompaniments.
"Jugged" properly describes cooking sealed in an earthenware jug standing in a pan of boiling water, the method still attached to jugged hare, where the animal's blood thickened the gravy at the end. By the time this entry was compiled in the later nineteenth century the word had loosened to mean almost any long, closely covered stew of dark meat, and this version is frankly a stewpan braise with a roux. The presence of roebuck at all says something about the Victorian game trade: roe deer, along with red deer and imported venison, moved through London game dealers in season, and at 1s. 4d. to 2s. per pound it stood well above the price of butcher's beef. The clove, lemon-peel and sweet-herb seasoning is the standard English treatment for strong-flavoured meat, inherited from an older tradition of spicing game heavily; the breast was in any case the thin end of the carcass, the haunch and saddle being the roasting joints.