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VENISON, ROAST (a German recipe)
Hang the venison for ten days or a fortnight in a cool, dry place. At the end of that time wash and wipe it, then beat it well. Flay off the skin. Take bacon-strips rather more than two inches long, and with these lard the fleshy parts all over. Roast or bake the meat, basting constantly; use sour cream or butter and milk for the purpose. Send to table with a sauce made by adding water to the bastings, skimming and straining, and adding pepper, salt, and lemon-juice.
A sparse nineteenth-century game recipe that assumes you have a hanging larder and know your cuts. The instructions worth adding are a temperature for the oven, an internal temperature for the meat, and a warning about what sour cream does over direct heat.
- The hinge: internal temperatureVenison has almost no intramuscular fat and turns dry and livery past medium-rare. Roast to 125-130F at the centre for a saddle or haunch and rest 15 minutes; the original's "roast or bake" gives no time because the cook was expected to judge by feel.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Start at 425F for 15 minutes to colour the larded surface, then drop to 325F for the remainder — roughly 12-15 minutes per pound for a boneless haunch.
- Which cutThe recipe does not say which joint; "the venison" in a roast of this period would normally be a haunch (leg) or saddle. A modern loin or denuded leg roast of 3-4 lb serves 6-8 and needs proportionally less time than a large bone-in joint.
- HangingTen days to a fortnight is in line with period practice for deer, but "cool" meant an unheated game larder, whose temperature was whatever the season allowed; aim for about 34-40F. Anything warmer is not safe, and most venison sold butchered today has already been hung -- wash, wipe and proceed.
- Flay off the skinOn modern retail venison this means removing the tough silverskin and any remaining membrane rather than hide. Leave none of it: it contracts in the heat and pulls the joint out of shape.
- LardingThe bacon strips are structural, not seasoning — they baste the lean muscle from inside. Without a larding needle, cut deep slits with a thin knife and push in chilled strips of fatty bacon or pork back fat, or bard the joint by tying sheets of fat over the surface.
- Sour cream bastingSour cream will split and scorch if it hits the pan floor at high heat. Baste with melted butter and milk during the initial blast, switch to the cream once the oven has come down, and keep liquid in the pan so the drippings do not burn.
- The sauceDeglaze the roasting tin, add water to the skimmed pan juices, strain, then season with pepper, salt and lemon juice off the heat. If the strained liquid tastes thin, reduce it before adding lemon; a spoonful of the sour cream stirred in at the end and not boiled echoes the cream basting the recipe calls for.
Roast venison larded with bacon and basted with soured cream belongs to the same tradition as the German and Austrian Rehbraten and Hirschbraten, where the pan juices are finished with cream and sometimes redcurrant or juniper. The recipe is labelled "a German recipe" to mark it off from the usual English treatment: British cookery books of the same era roast the haunch under a flour-and-water paste and send it to table with clear gravy and redcurrant jelly. The long hanging is not affectation. Venison muscle is dense and low in fat, and a fortnight in a cold larder lets enzymes tenderise the meat and develop the flavour the period called "high" -- a taste for slightly gamey meat that has largely receded, along with the unheated larders that made it easy to achieve.