No. 2179

Roebuck—Haunch or Quarter—a la Lytton

Hanche ou Quartier de Chevreuil a la Lytton

Choose a very fat haunch of roebuck; bone the thick loin end, sprinkle salt over, and coat the surfaces with butter: wrap it up in buttered paper, then in a flat of paste made with three pounds of flour into which is added an ounce of salt, three eggs, and just sufficient water to form a very firm dough: place this in a wet cloth, and leave it for several hours, then roll it out to an eighth of an inch in thickness; wrap it all around the meat; fasten the two ends and sides by wetting them both and have one overlap the other to prevent any fissure whatever, then cover it all with buttered paper; lay it on a cradle spit (Fig. 116), or else in a moderate oven in a baking-pan. The length of time to cook it depends upon its size; for a medium haunch of venison it will take two hours; deer require three hours. Remove the paper, brown the paste nicely, and serve with a poivrade sauce (No. 522), finished with currant jelly and cold sour apple marmalade (No. 3674).

← No. 2178 Roebuck—Haunch or Quarter—a la Bouchard Other Game No. 2180 Jugged Venison →

For the Modern Kitchen

A whole haunch baked inside a flour-and-egg armour, in the manner of the old huff paste. The technique still works, but nearly every quantity and cue in it needs translating.

Cook to temperature, not to the clockTwo to three hours in an oven will take a lean haunch far past palatable. Push a probe through the crust into the thickest part and pull the joint at 125-130F for rare, 135F for medium, then rest 20-30 minutes; the crust holds heat and the internal temperature will climb several degrees.
"A moderate oven"Conventionally read as somewhere around 325-350F; Ranhofer gives no figure. The paste case is there to shield the meat, so there is no benefit in going hotter; the final browning of the crust happens at the end, after the buttered paper comes off.
RoebuckEuropean roe deer, sold in Britain and on the Continent as roe venison and essentially unavailable in North America. A red deer or fallow haunch, or a farmed New Zealand venison haunch of 5-8 lb, behaves the same way. Wild American whitetail is leaner still and wants the low end of the temperature range.
"Very fat"Few roe deer sold today will carry the fat cover Ranhofer assumed. Bard the boned loin end with sheets of pork back fat or caul under the buttered paper, or the crust will simply dry the surface.
The paste is a vessel, not a pastryThree pounds of flour, an ounce of salt, three eggs and minimal water gives a stiff, largely inedible shell whose job is to seal in steam. Ranhofer says to brown it and send it to table, but it is carved off and discarded. Scale it to your joint: about 1 lb of flour per 3 lb of meat is enough for a 1/8-inch sheet with a margin for sealing.
SealingThis is the hinge. Any gap vents steam and the meat roasts dry in its own oven. Wet both overlapping edges, press firmly, and patch any thin spot with a scrap before the outer paper goes on.
Cradle spitFigure 116 shows a cradle spit, a frame for holding and turning a large joint before an open fire. The recipe itself offers the alternative of a baking-pan in a moderate oven; a rack in a heavy roasting pan is the modern equivalent.
The accompanimentsPoivrade is the peppery game sauce built on a mirepoix, vinegar and crushed peppercorns finished with stock; the recipe has it finished with currant jelly and cold sour apple marmalade. Both the sauce (No. 522) and the marmalade (No. 3674) are separate numbered recipes in the book.
YieldA haunch on this scale serves 8-12 as a centrepiece, carved in long slices parallel to the bone.

A Little History

Baking meat inside a heavy flour case is one of the oldest roasting tricks in the European kitchen — the medieval "coffyn" and the later English huff paste both used cheap flour as a disposable jacket, sealing in juices at a time when ovens were fierce and uneven. Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, gave the treatment a French title and a patron's name: Lytton, often said to honour the Bulwer-Lytton family, in the fashion of the period for dedicating dishes to titled diners and public figures. That roebuck appears at all is a reminder of how much game moved through a nineteenth-century American luxury restaurant — The Epicurean devotes long sections to venison, bear, antelope and wild birds, much of it market game, a trade later ended by state and federal wildlife law. The pairing with currant jelly and sour apple is the standard period answer to lean, strong-flavoured venison, and it has outlived the spit it was cooked on.