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Roast Venison
Slit the venison and lard it with pieces of pork or bacon. Place pieces of pork or bacon on the bottom of the pan; slice very fine, vegetables on the bacon, then place your meat on this. Season, brown well on the top of the stove, then turn over and brown on the other side; then set in the oven and put soup stock or water in the bottom of the pan and cover closely. Serve with gravy. The vegetables may be chopped fine and served with it, or not. Be careful not to let them burn. Baste with port wine.
This is a braise dressed up as a roast: the meat is browned on the stovetop, then finished covered over liquid and a bed of vegetables. Nothing here is dangerous, but the recipe gives no weights, no temperature and no time, so the decisions are all yours.
- The hinge: lean meat, covered panVenison has very little intramuscular fat, which is why the recipe lards it with pork and then seals the pan. Keep the lid tight the whole time in the oven; every uncovered stretch dries the surface faster than the fat can protect it.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives none. For a covered braise of a shoulder or haunch, a moderate oven of around 325F works well. If you are using a loin or tenderloin, do not braise it at all — sear and roast it uncovered at 425F to an internal 130-135F and rest it.
- Larding"Slit and lard" means driving strips of chilled fatback or thick bacon through the meat with a larding needle. Without one, cut deep slits with a thin knife and push the strips in, or bard instead — tie sheets of fat or bacon over the outside.
- Which cutA shoulder, neck or older haunch takes roughly 2.5 to 3.5 hours at 325F, until a fork turns easily. Farmed venison is generally younger and more tender than the wild meat this book had in mind and will get there sooner; start checking at two hours.
- The vegetable bedOnion, carrot and celery sliced thin, on top of the bacon. The warning about burning is real: keep at least half an inch of stock in the pan and top it up if it cooks away, or the sugars in the carrot will scorch and carry a bitter note into the gravy.
- Basting with portWith the pan covered you cannot baste often without losing heat. Add a cup of port to the stock at the start instead, and reserve a splash to finish the strained gravy off the heat.
- Quantities and yieldNone are given. A 4 lb bone-in shoulder, 6 oz of bacon or fatback, a pound of mixed vegetables and two cups of stock is a workable set of proportions and serves six.
- The gravyStrain the pan liquid, skim the pork fat, and reduce hard. If you want the vegetables served alongside as suggested, lift them out before straining rather than after.
The Bride's Cook Book is one of many American cookbooks aimed at the newly married. Larding — threading strips of pork fat through lean meat — was common practice for joints that lacked marbling, and the larding needle was standard kitchen equipment well into the twentieth century, before fattier commercially raised meat made it largely unnecessary. A bed of bacon and sliced root vegetables under the joint is the standard braising arrangement. Port with venison is a long-standing English pairing, usually linked to the tradition of serving port with the game course, though that link is tradition rather than documented fact.