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Roebuck, Roast
Take a leg of roebuck, saw away the shankbones, and pare off about four inches of the top skin. Lard the bare place closely and evenly with thin strips of fat bacon. Wrap the leg in buttered paper, leaving both ends open, put it down before a clear fire, and roast it till done enough. About ten minutes before it is taken down, remove the paper and sprinkle a little salt over the joint. Serve with a paper frill round the knuckle, and send poivrade sauce to table in a tureen. The directions for making this sauce are given with ROEBUCK, HAUNCH OF, MARINADED. Time to roast a leg weighing five pounds, fifty minutes. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A spit-roast joint of European roe deer, written for an open hearth and a cook who had the companion sauce recipe on the facing page. The method translates cleanly to an oven, provided you treat the meat as very lean and stop well short of well done.
- The hinge: internal temperatureRoe venison has almost no intramuscular fat and turns dry and liverish past medium rare. Pull the leg at 125-130F at the thickest point and rest it 15-20 minutes; fifty minutes for a 5 lb leg is a short roasting time by modern standards and suits a joint served pink rather than cooked through.
- Fire to oven"A clear fire" means a hearth burnt down to bright coals with little or no smoke, the joint set down before it to roast. The book gives no oven setting; if you are adapting, a hot oven of roughly 425-450F comes closest to that radiant heat, and the leg should be turned once or twice.
- Sourcing the meatRoe deer is not generally available in the United States. Use a leg of farmed red or fallow venison, or a boned-and-tied haunch; a whole wild whitetail leg works but is usually tougher and better braised. A 5 lb leg is the size the recipe is built around.
- LardingLarding with strips of fat bacon threaded through the exposed muscle is doing the work the animal's own fat cannot. If you have no larding needle, cover the bared area with thin sheets of pork back fat or fatty bacon and tie it on, which bastes as it renders.
- Buttered paperButtered kitchen paper is a shield against radiant heat. Buttered parchment tied on loosely, or a loose tent of foil, does the same; remove it for the last ten minutes so the surface can colour, exactly as written.
- Trimming"Pare off about four inches of the top skin" means removing the tough outer membrane and silverskin from the wide end of the leg, not skinning the animal. Any silverskin left on will contract and pull the joint out of shape.
- Poivrade sauceThe cross-referenced sauce is not printed on this page. Classic sauce poivrade is a peppery brown sauce built on mirepoix, vinegar and game stock, finished with crushed peppercorns; any standard sauce poivrade recipe will serve, and venison stock or a well-reduced beef stock stands in for the game trimmings.
- ServingThe paper frill round the knuckle is decoration only. The book gives six to eight portions; carve in slices across the grain. Classic accompaniments are redcurrant or rowan jelly and braised chestnuts or celeriac.
Roebuck is the male roe deer, the small native deer of Britain and much of Europe, and its appearance in a late-Victorian household dictionary reflects a kitchen still organised around what came in from an estate rather than what could be bought. Cassell's treats venison as a family of joints -- haunch, leg, loin, marinaded or plain -- each with its own entry. The instructions to lard the meat and wrap it in buttered paper are the standard nineteenth-century answers to the same problem: roe venison carries far less fat than beef or mutton, and a spit before an open fire dries a lean joint quickly. Marinading, given as an alternative in the haunch entry, was the other traditional remedy, said to be reserved for older or stronger-tasting beasts.