No. 2168

Loin of Deer, Cherry Sauce

Longe de Daim, Sauce aux Cerises

The loin is the part of the deer beginning at the thick loin end and reaching as far as the first rib; remove the skin from the sirloin and put the meat into an earthen dish with a quart of vinegar and two gills of water, should the vinegar be too strong; adding whole peppers, salt, bay leaf, thyme and parsley leaves. Leave it to marinate for several days, then lard with medium lardons (No. 2, Fig. 52); lay it it in a baking pan, and pour over some fat; cook in a hot oven and when three-quarters done season with pepper, salt, pour over vinegar, a little broth and gravy; when done dress and cover with the skimmed stock serving a cherry sauce (No. 447) apart.

← No. 2167 Venison. Antelope. Deer Venison & Large Game No. 2169 Rack of Venison, Roasted Colbert Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a full deer loin, a larding needle, and a cook who knows when to stop. The instructions are sound, but three things need translating: the marinade, the fat, and the doneness.

The hinge: internal temperatureThe recipe gives no guide beyond "when done," and taken to well-done a deer loin turns to leather. Pull the meat at 125-130F for rare to medium-rare and rest it 10 minutes; the loin is among the leanest muscles on the animal and has little connective tissue to reward long cooking.
"A hot oven"425-450F. Sear-roast the loin fast so the exterior colours before the centre passes 130F. A larger loin can be started at 450F and dropped to 375F after 15 minutes.
Gills and vinegarA gill is half a cup, so two gills is one cup of water thinning a quart of vinegar. Modern distilled vinegar is usually similar in acidity to wine vinegar but blunter and harsher in flavour; use red wine vinegar, and consider cutting it half-and-half with red wine rather than water.
Marinate cold"Several days" in an earthen dish meant a cool larder. Refrigerate, and hold to two or three days for farmed venison, longer only for old wild meat. Use glass, ceramic or stainless steel; the acid will pick up metal from aluminium or bare cast iron.
LardingLardons pulled through the muscle with a larding needle compensate for venison having almost no intramuscular fat. Without the needle, bard instead: wrap the loin in sheets of pork fatback or thin-sliced bacon and tie at intervals, removing it for the last few minutes if you want colour on the meat.
"Pour over some fat"Rendered pork fat, beef dripping or clarified butter. Ordinary butter will burn at this oven temperature.
The pan sauceThe vinegar, broth and gravy added at three-quarters done deglaze the pan; "skimmed stock" means you lift the fat off the pan juices before spooning them over. The cherry sauce is Ranhofer's separate No. 447, served apart; its composition is not given on this page.
YieldThe recipe gives no weight. A whole loin as described will serve a table of eight or so; a single boneless loin from a farmed deer, around 2 lb, serves four and will need considerably less oven time.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty years cooking at Delmonico's in New York, and its game chapter is unusually long; one may guess this reflects the fact that American restaurants of the period still bought wild venison, antelope and grouse from market hunters. Ranhofer treats deer as a French chef would treat roe: a long acidulated marinade to tame gamy meat of unknown age, larding to supply the fat the animal lacks, and a sweet-sharp fruit sauce alongside. The pairing of venison with cherries, currants or other sour fruit is generally traced to Central European and German game cookery, and it reached the French repertoire in sauces of the poivrade and grand veneur family, where redcurrant jelly performs the same job. The dish may tell you something about the era's supply chain as well as its taste: it is tempting to read a quart of vinegar and several days of steeping as insurance against meat that had travelled a long way in a barrel, though that is speculation.