No. 2050

Boar Saddle and Quarter—Roasted

Selles et Quartiers de Sanglier Rotis

Before roasting a saddle or quarter of boar is better to be sure that the animal is a very young one. The saddle tenderloin must not be pared as for venison, neither are the quarters pared; simply steep the pieces of meat for twenty-four hours in a cooked and cold marinade (No. 114). They are to be roasted in a very deep pan lined with fragments of salt pork and cut up roots, then basted over with butter. For a young boar it will take from an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half in a moderate oven. After removing it from the fire, dress it on a dish and unglaze the bottom of the pan with a few spoonfuls of the marinade; reduce the liquid for a few moments, then strain, skim off the fat and thicken the sauce either with some sauce or kneaded butter (No. 579); serve it in a sauce-boat. With roast boar a light acidulated sauce is usually served, prepared with a little of its marinade; a saucerful of currant jelly is also its usual accompaniment.

← No. 2049 Young Wild Boar—Quarter—Garnished with Cutle Venison & Large Game No. 2051 Doe Birds Roasted and Broiled →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a kitchen with a whole young boar, a stock of numbered mother sauces and a cook who knows what a cooked marinade is. The method translates cleanly to a farmed boar saddle or leg, or to a bone-in pork loin, once the cross-references are unpacked.

Cook it to temperature, not to the clockWild boar carries the same trichinella risk as any wild suid, and the modern standard is an internal temperature of 160F at the thickest point, rested. Ranhofer's hour and a quarter to hour and a half is a reasonable guide for a young animal, but verify with a thermometer rather than trusting the time.
A moderate ovenRanhofer gives no temperatures; 'moderate' in period usage is generally read as somewhere around 350F. The deep pan and the bed of pork and roots mean the meat is half-braised at the base, so the heat does not need to be fierce.
The marinade (No. 114)Ranhofer's cooked marinade is a wine and/or vinegar based liquid simmered with aromatic vegetables, herbs and spices, then cooled before the meat goes in. The recipe is explicit that it must be cold when it meets the meat; a warm marinade sitting twenty-four hours with raw game is a food-safety problem, and refrigeration throughout should be assumed even though 1894 said only 'cold.'
"Not pared"Venison saddle is stripped of silverskin and sinew before roasting; boar, being fattier and closer to pork, is left with its fat and membrane intact so that it bastes itself. Do not trim it back to bare muscle.
Salt pork and cut-up rootsThe fragments of salt pork are a lining, not a garnish: they render and keep the meat off the hot metal. Unsmoked pork belly or fatback works; the 'roots' would typically be something like carrot, onion and celery, cut large so they do not scorch in an hour and a half.
"Unglaze"Ranhofer's word for deglaze. Pour off the fat, add a few spoonfuls of the strained marinade to the hot pan, scrape up the fond, reduce briefly, then strain and skim again before thickening.
Kneaded butter (No. 579)Equal weights of soft butter and flour worked to a paste, whisked into the simmering sauce in small pieces. Modern name: beurre manie. It thickens without the raw-flour taste of an unbrowned roux.
Yield and accompanimentAccompaniment -- The currant jelly and the light acidulated sauce are not optional flourishes in this style of service; Ranhofer calls both usual, and they are the intended counterweight to a rich, dark, fatty roast.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working manual, written for cooks who had the whole numbered system at hand. Wild boar sat in the game chapters alongside venison and doe birds because nineteenth-century American restaurant menus still leaned heavily on wild meat, some of it domestic and some imported; sanglier carried a particular French prestige, and the marinade-and-currant-jelly treatment here is straight out of the classical grand gibier repertoire that Careme and his successors codified. The insistence on a very young animal is practical rather than fussy: an old boar is tough, strongly flavored, and in the older kitchen literature generally consigned to long braising or to pates rather than the spit. The pairing of dark game with a tart red fruit jelly is very old and is usually traced to the medieval and early modern taste for sharp fruit sauces with roasted meat, which survived into the modern era chiefly on the game platter.