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VENISON, HAUNCH OF (M. Ude's recipe)
"It was customary in France to cut off a small rosette from the leg, to lard, and then pickle it. In England it is customary to put it on a spit, then to make some paste with flour and water only, and case the venison with it, securing it with a few sheets of paper. It cannot be done thoroughly in less than four hours. It is usually served up with red currant jelly, made hot, with a little port wine. The women cooks in England put flour over the roast just before they remove it from the spit, a custom which is utterly absurd. I approve of the practice of flouring roast meat, if it be done early enough to imbibe the gravy, and get nicely browned, when it becomes very tasty. In the other case, the froth of the flour and butter adheres to the palate, and has an abominable taste. I like to remove the paper from the venison a few minutes before it is served, and glaze the venison with very good glaze; some fine salt must be spread over it before the glaze is applied. This method is better and more tasty than the other."
Ude is describing a spit-roasted haunch shielded by a flour-and-water crust, and most of what needs translating here is equipment rather than ingredients.
- The paste is the point"paste with flour and water only" is what English cooks called huff paste: a stiff, unshortened dough of flour and water, rolled out and wrapped over the whole haunch. It is not eaten; it is a sacrificial jacket that keeps a very lean joint from drying out over fierce radiant heat. Ude gives no proportions or thickness.
- PaperThe "few sheets of paper" are tied over the crust to hold it in place and stop it scorching; period practice was often to butter or wet the paper first, though Ude does not say so. Parchment and kitchen string will do the same job.
- Spit to ovenWithout a spit, roast the wrapped haunch on a rack in a large tin. Ude gives no oven temperature, since he is roasting before a fire; a moderate oven is the usual modern substitute, but the fire browned by radiation from one side and needed constant basting and turning.
- Four hours is for a whole haunchA deer haunch of the kind a large household kitchen handled was a great deal heavier than a modern farmed one, and the crust slows heat transfer considerably. A 6-8 lb farmed haunch, still cased in paste, will be done well before four hours. Judge by internal temperature at the thickest part away from bone: venison is lean and dries past about 135F, so it wants medium-rare, not the long roast its size suggests.
- GlazeUde's "very good glaze" is heavily reduced brown stock, thick enough to set to a syrup and be brushed on: meat glace, not a sugar glaze. Reduce a well-flavoured venison or veal stock down hard and brush it on after salting, as he says, in the last few minutes.
- His objection to late flouringThe English trick he dismisses is dusting flour over the joint at the last moment so butter and flour froth up into a pale coating. Flour added early browns and absorbs fat and juices; flour added late stays raw and pasty. He is right, and the same logic applies to any last-minute dusting of a roast.
- Currant jelly and portWarm redcurrant jelly loosened with a little port, as Ude has it, is still the standard accompaniment. He gives no quantity beyond "a little".
- YieldNo quantities are given. A haunch on the bone serves roughly two people per pound of raw weight, so even a small farmed one feeds a large table; it was a company joint, carved at the sideboard.
Louis Eustache Ude was one of the French chefs who came to England after the Revolution, cooked for the Earl of Sefton, and later ran the kitchen at Crockford's gaming club in St James's; his The French Cook (1813) went through many editions and is the source of the opinionated voice here. The value of the passage is argumentative — a French professional correcting English roasting practice, and taking a swipe at "the women cooks in England" as he does so, a reminder of how sharply the male restaurant-trained chef distinguished himself from the household cook. Huff paste itself is older and thoroughly English, used for venison and for hams long before Ude arrived, and the fact that he endorses casing the haunch while rejecting the last-minute flour shows him picking through a native tradition rather than dismissing it. Venison in this period was largely park-bred and often arrived as a gift from a landowner rather than through regular trade, which is why so much care went into not spoiling it.