No. 2171

Venison Cutlets a la Cauchoise

Cotelettes de Chevreuil a la Cauchoise

Cut and pare some venison cutlets and lay them in a sauteing pan with clarified butter; saute on a brisk fire, then remove from the pan, keeping them warm; detach the glaze with a little white wine and poivrade sauce (No. 523), roll the cutlets in this to have them well covered, take out and trim the handles; range them in a circle and fill the center with some cream of game (No. 2240), and all around with a garnishing made of cabbage puree, mingled with egg-yolks and veloute sauce, then poached in mousseline mold (No. 4, Fig. 138).

← No. 2170 Venison Cutlets a la Buridan Venison & Large Game No. 2172 Venison Cutlets a la Financiere →

For the Modern Kitchen

A cross-referenced Ranhofer plate rather than a standalone recipe: the cutlets themselves take five minutes, and everything else is a component from elsewhere in the book. Read it as an assembly diagram.

The hinge: do not overcookVenison loin has almost no intramuscular fat and turns dry and livery past medium-rare. Sauté over high heat to a good crust and pull at 125-130F internal; the rolling in sauce afterward is a glazing step, not more cooking.
ChevreuilRoe deer, small and fine-grained. Farmed red deer or axis venison loin cut into 1-inch chops works; two chops per person from a rack. If you buy a boneless loin, cut thick medallions and skip the bone-trimming step.
"Trim the handles"The rib bones are scraped clean (frenched) so each cutlet has a handle to stand it upright in the ring.
Clarified butterUsed because whole butter's milk solids scorch at the heat wanted here. Ghee or clarified butter, or half butter and half neutral oil.
Poivrade sauceA brown game sauce: mirepoix sweated in fat, deglazed with vinegar and wine, moistened with game or veal stock and espagnole, finished with crushed peppercorns added late so they perfume rather than turn harsh. Any good peppery brown game sauce serves.
Detach the glazeDeglaze the sauté pan with a splash of dry white wine, reduce to almost nothing, then add the poivrade. Turn the cutlets in it off the heat so they take a coat without stewing.
Cream of game and the cabbage garnishNo. 2240 is a separate game preparation from elsewhere in the book, spooned into the center of the ring. The border is cabbage puree bound with egg yolks and veloute, filled into small buttered mousseline molds (No. 4, Fig. 138) and poached until just set, then turned out.
YieldWritten for a composed platter; a rack of eight cutlets ringed on a warm round dish serves four.

A Little History

A la cauchoise means in the manner of the Pays de Caux, the chalk plateau of Upper Normandy above the Seine, a name usually attached to dishes leaning on Normandy's dairy, cider and apples. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete professional reference, and this entry shows how such books were built: the dish exists mainly as a set of numbers pointing to sauces, forcemeats and molds documented elsewhere in the volume. Venison held a particular place on the nineteenth-century American restaurant card, since wild game was still commercially hunted and sold in city markets on a scale that the game laws of the following decades would end.