No. 2181

Venison—Slices of Kernel—a la Hussarde

Tranches de Noix de Chevreuil a la Hussarde

Cut off some slices from the kernel of a haunch, five-eighths of an inch thick; pare into ovals each one to weigh about half a pound, and marinate in cold cooked marinade (No. 114) for two hours; saute them rare in butter, and dress on a hussarde sauce (No. 482).

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For the Modern Kitchen

A short entry that assumes you have Ranhofer's marinade and sauce recipes to hand, and a whole haunch of deer on the bench. The whole dish turns on cooking lean venison rare and stopping there.

What the "kernel" isNoix de chevreuil is the eye of the haunch — the large single muscle of the leg, equivalent to the top round on a butchered deer. Ask for a leg eye or a denuded haunch muscle; a loin will substitute, though the slices will be smaller and rounder.
ChevreuilThe original means roe deer, a small European species. Farmed or wild red deer, fallow, or North American whitetail all work; venison from a larger animal simply gives wider slices, so pare to the shape rather than to the diameter.
Portion sizeFive-eighths of an inch is about 1.5 cm, and half a pound (225 g) per trimmed oval is a Gilded Age restaurant portion. One slice per person is generous by current standards; two thinner medallions of 4 oz each cook more evenly and are easier to keep rare.
Cold cooked marinadeRanhofer's No. 114 is a wine-and-vinegar marinade with aromatics that is simmered and then completely cooled before use. Warm marinade will grey the surface of the meat; chill it thoroughly, and keep the meat refrigerated through the two hours, not on the counter.
Dry the meatTwo hours in a wet marinade leaves the surface soaked. Pat the slices thoroughly dry before they go in the pan or they will steam instead of browning, and the crust is most of what butter-sautéing is for.
Rare means rareVenison has almost no intramuscular fat and goes dry and liverish past medium. A slice of this thickness needs roughly two to three minutes a side in foaming butter over fairly high heat; pull it at 120-125F internal and rest five minutes, which carries it to about 130F.
Hussarde sauceSauce hussarde in this era is a brown sauce built on onion and shallot with white wine, ham and tomato, characteristically sharpened with grated horseradish. Add the horseradish off the heat at the end — sustained boiling drives off its pungency and leaves only a dull bitterness.
DressingThe sauce goes underneath, on the plate, with the meat set on it; this keeps the seared surface intact. Sauce the plates while the meat rests, and serve the resting juices into the sauce rather than over the crust.

A Little History

This is entry No. 2181 from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium he assembled after some three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York. Its cross-referenced structure — a marinade at No. 114, a sauce at No. 482, the meat at No. 2181 — is the working logic of a brigade kitchen rather than a home cook's book, and explains the telegraphic style. À la hussarde, hussar-style, is one of the many nineteenth-century garnish names borrowed from military and national types; it is generally traced to Hungarian light cavalry and, like most such names, signals a horseradish-and-onion character rather than any documented origin. That Ranhofer specifies chevreuil, roe deer, reflects the French vocabulary of his training; the venison actually passing through Delmonico's kitchen in the 1880s and 1890s would have been American deer, then still a common item on grand restaurant menus before market hunting was curtailed by state game laws and, in 1900, the federal Lacey Act.