No. 2174

Venison Cutlets, Tomato Parisian Sauce

Cotelettes de Chevreuil, Sauce Tomate Parisienne

Pare some venison cutlets, season with salt and pepper and saute in clarified butter or oil over a brisk fire; when of a fine color and sufficiently done, drain off the fat and detach the glaze from the pan with a little white wine, adding a little brown sauce (No. 414) and meat glaze (No. 402). Dress the cutlets after trimming them with paper frills (No. 10) intercalating them with half heart-shaped croutons and pour the sauce in the center; serve a tomato Parisian sauce (No. 550) separately.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes in shorthand for a professional brigade: half the recipe lives in cross-referenced numbers. Once you know what those numbers stand for, this is a fast sauté with a pan sauce and a second sauce sent to the table.

Do not overcook the cutletsFarmed and wild venison loin is very lean and turns dry and livery past medium. Sear hard and pull at 125-130F internal for rare to medium-rare, then rest 5 minutes; the recipe gives no doneness cue beyond "a fine color and sufficiently done," so judge by feel and temperature rather than by modern well-done habits.
ChevreuilRoe deer, a small European deer whose loin chops are barely two bites each. Any farmed venison rack cut into single-bone cutlets, or a loin sliced into 3/4-inch medallions, stands in; allow two or three per person rather than one.
Brown sauce (No. 414) and meat glaze (No. 402)No. 414 is Ranhofer's brown sauce, the espagnole of the book: a long-simmered brown roux sauce built on brown stock; No. 402 is glace de viande, stock reduced to a syrup that sets firm when cold. A good demi-glace covers both, or deglaze with the wine and mount in a spoonful of reduced stock and a knob of butter.
Tomato Parisian sauce (No. 550)Not a raw tomato sauce; it is a cooked sauce from Ranhofer's sauce chapter, and would need to be looked up under its own number. Serve it hot in a boat, separately, as instructed.
Clarified butter and a brisk fireWhole butter burns before the pan is hot enough to colour venison. Clarified butter, ghee or a neutral oil takes the heat; "brisk" means the pan is genuinely hot, not moderate, and the cutlets go in dry and seasoned.
Detaching the glazeThe fat is poured off first so the wine lifts only the browned fond, not a greasy emulsion. A few tablespoons of dry white wine is enough for a pan of cutlets; reduce it almost away before the brown sauce goes in.
Croutons and frillsThe half heart-shaped croutons are bread cut with a cutter and fried in butter, set between the cutlets around the edge of the dish so the sauce pools in the middle. Paper frills (No. 10) are purely decorative cuffs for the rib bones and can be skipped without loss.
YieldThe original gives no number. Reckon on a rack of eight cutlets serving four, with the pan sauce in the centre of the platter and the tomato sauce passed.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially the house's working system set down in print, which is why so many entries are little more than a string of cross-references to sauces and garnishes cooked elsewhere in the building. Venison occupied a large section because American restaurants of the period drew on market game in a way now impossible: wild deer, and much else, was sold commercially before state game laws and the federal Lacey Act of 1900, which barred interstate transport of illegally taken game, worked together over a period of years to curtail the traffic in wild meat. The French title points to roe deer, but Ranhofer's kitchen was presumably working with American deer, dressed up in a Parisian idiom, and the tomato Parisian sauce is a mark of the era's growing comfort with cooked tomato in the classical brown-sauce repertoire. The frills and heart-shaped croutons are usually read as belonging to the service he food arrived already composed on its platter and needed to look composed from across the table.