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Roasted Saddle of Venison
Procure a small saddle of venison weighing about five pounds, pare it neatly, remove the sinews from the surface and lard it with a larding-needle, tying it three times round. Put into a roastingpan one sliced onion and one sliced carrot, then put in the saddle, seasoning with one pinch of salt; spread over one-half ounce of butter and stand it in a brisk oven for fifty minutes, basting it frequently with its own gravy. Untie before lifting it from the pan, and arrange it on a hot dish. Pour into the pan one wineglassful of Madeira wine and one gill of white broth, and let it come to a boil on the stove. Skim off the fat, strain the lean part over the saddle, and serve it with one-half pint of hot currant jelly sauce in a sauceboat. Roasted Shoulder of Venison, French Style Bone and stuff a shoulder of venison, lard it, and either roast or bake it, protecting the lardoons with several thicknesses of buttered paper. If the meat is basted while it is being cooked, take care not to baste the larded part, as that would soften the lardoons. When the venison is nearly done season it with salt and cayenne remove the buttered paper, brown the lardoons and then remove the skins used to confine the stuffing, and serve the venison hot with red currant jelly or any suitable sauce.
A short, hot roast of a lean cut, written for a kitchen where larding pork fat into game was routine. The measurements are late-Victorian restaurant shorthand and the timing assumes a saddle served pink.
- Brisk ovenGenerally taken to mean a hot oven, somewhere around 400-450F. The saddle is thin and lean, so the heat is meant to color the surface before the interior overcooks.
- Fifty minutes is a guide, not a ruleA 5 lb bone-in saddle at that heat will reach medium rare in roughly 35-50 minutes depending on thickness. Cook to an internal temperature of 125-130F at the thickest point and rest it 10-15 minutes; venison has almost no intramuscular fat and turns dry and livery past 140F.
- LardingLardoons are strips of firm pork fatback or unsmoked fat bacon drawn through the meat with a larding needle. If you have no needle, bard instead: tie sheets of fatback or thin-sliced pork fat over the surface and remove them for the last ten minutes. This is the step that keeps the roast from drying, not a decoration.
- UnitsA gill is half a cup. A wineglassful in this period is about 2 fluid ounces, a quarter cup. The half ounce of butter is one tablespoon.
- White brothA light unbrowned stock, veal or chicken, unsalted or barely salted. Plain chicken stock is the closest supermarket equivalent; avoid a dark beef stock, which will bury the Madeira.
- Currant jelly sauceHalf a pint is a full cup, which is generous for four to six people. Red currant jelly melted with a little of the pan juices, port or Madeira, and a strip of orange zest gives the classic sweet-sharp counterweight; do not boil it hard or it will set stiff as it cools.
- SourcingFarmed venison saddle, usually red deer or fallow, is sold by game butchers and online and is milder and fatter than wild deer. A wild saddle will cook faster still. Ask for it on the bone with the chine split for carving.
- The shoulder variationShoulder is a working muscle and does not respond to a brisk oven the way the saddle does. Boned, stuffed and rolled it wants low, moist heat over two to three hours. The recipe uses the buttered paper to shield the lardoons, which are removed and browned only at the end.
- YieldA 5 lb bone-in saddle serves four to six as a main course.
The Waldorf's dining rooms operated at a moment when American hotel cooking took much of its grammar from French practice, and this pair of recipes shows it: the saddle is treated as selle de chevreuil, larded, roasted fast, deglazed with Madeira and sent out with currant jelly, a pairing long associated with game. Venison reached New York tables in this period through the market-hunting trade, and the same decades that produced this book produced the state game laws and the 1900 Lacey Act, which together curtailed commercial traffic in wild game; that is why a saddle of venison today generally comes from a deer farm rather than a game dealer's stall. The larding needle, once standard equipment for any cook handling lean meat, has largely fallen out of use; game is the cut that still rewards it.