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Roasted Forequarter of Venison
Bone the venison, beat it well and rub it with salt. Prepare a paste of flour, eggs, a pinch of salt, and a small quantity of water, and leave it in a cool place for an hour; then roll it out thinly, cover it with slices of bacon, place the venison on the bacon, sprinkle some salt and pepper over it, and wrap it up. Dampen the edges of the paste with water, and press them firmly together, wrap in a sheet of buttered paper, and roast it in a hot oven on a baking pan. Fifteen minutes before taking the venison up, remove the paper and paste. When cooked take the joint carefully off the pan, place it on a hot dish, and serve with red currant jelly, and a sauceboatful of poivrade sauce.
A boned venison shoulder baked inside a flour-and-egg crust, which acts as a sealed jacket rather than as pastry to be eaten. Oscar gives no weights, times or temperatures, so the numbers below come from current practice with the same cut.
- The crust is a vessel, not a pastryFlour, egg, salt and just enough water makes a stiff, unleavened huff paste. It is there to trap steam and bacon fat around a lean cut; it is discarded, which is why it is pulled off for the last fifteen minutes so the surface can brown.
- Hot ovenOscar gives no figure, and period usage for a 'hot oven' is not standardised; roughly 400-450F is the usual modern reading. Starting high and dropping to about 350F after the first 20 minutes keeps the paste from scorching before the interior is warm.
- Cut and yieldA boned forequarter (shoulder and neck) varies widely with species: fallow will be far lighter than red deer, and a boned white-tailed deer shoulder lighter again. Weigh the joint and reckon servings from that rather than from a fixed figure.
- Doneness is the hingeVenison shoulder is lean and has no fat to forgive overcooking. Either pull it at 130-135F internal for medium-rare, or commit to a long braise; the middle ground gives dry, livery meat. With the paste on you cannot see the surface, so a probe through the crust is the only guide.
- "Beat it well"Pounding a boned shoulder flattens the uneven muscle groups so the joint cooks evenly and lets the salt penetrate. A heavy mallet or the flat of a cleaver does it; do not shred the meat into a mat.
- Poivrade sauceA brown pepper sauce built on venison or game trimmings, mirepoix, red wine and vinegar, finished with crushed peppercorns strained out at the last moment. Make it a day ahead from the bones you removed; it takes longer than the roast.
- BaconSlices laid under and around the meat, not just beneath. Modern wet-cured supermarket bacon leaks water; dry-cured or unsmoked streaky bacon bards better.
Oscar Tschirky was maitre d'hotel at the Waldorf from 1893 and his 1896 Cook Book reflects a hotel kitchen working in French idiom for American game. Enclosing a joint in a coarse flour-and-egg paste is an old European technique, older than usable ovens with controllable heat: the crust took the brunt of a fierce fire while the meat inside effectively steamed in its own juices and rendered bacon fat. It was applied especially to venison and to ham, both lean or salty and both punished by direct roasting. Wild venison was still a commercial commodity in 1890s New York, said to arrive by rail in season from the Adirondacks and the upper Midwest before state market-hunting bans and the federal Lacey Act of 1900 closed that trade; a forequarter, the cheaper end of the animal, was the sort of joint a hotel could serve in quantity. The red currant jelly alongside a peppery poivrade is the standard game pairing of the period, sweet against sharp, and it has outlasted most of the rest of the menu.