No. 2184

Minced Venison

Emince de Chevreuil

Cut a piece of cooked saddle of venison into even-sized slices; pare and range them in a small sautoir. Reduce the value of two gills of half-glaze sauce (No. 413), incorporating into it a few spoonfuls of the venison gravy and a few spoonfuls of raw cream; when this sauce becomes succulent, finish it with a dash of good vinegar and pour it over the slices of venison. Heat these meats well over a slow fire without allowing the sauce to boil and baste frequently with the same. Dress the stew the same as for minced partridge (No. 2090), either inside a border or else on a dish, and surround with fried Villeroi quenelles (No. 733) or crusts of bread hollowed out and filled in with a cooked salpicon of truffles; strain the sauce over. This mince may also be surrounded with stuffed Spanish olives (No. 695).

← No. 2183 Roebuck, Leg Of, a la Francatelli Venison & Large Game No. 2185 Saddle of Antelope, Huntress Style →

For the Modern Kitchen

A reheating dish for yesterday's roast venison, built on the classic French sauce larder. The whole thing hinges on temperature control rather than on any technique.

Never let it boilThe venison is already cooked, and the recipe is explicit that the sauce must not boil: boiling would squeeze the reheated slices dry and grainy. Hold the sautoir at a bare steam, well below a simmer, and baste until the meat is warmed through, a matter of a few minutes.
Two gillsA gill is half a cup, so two gills of half-glaze is one cup. Ranhofer's phrase 'the value of two gills' leaves the finished volume open; in practice expect well under a cup once the gravy and cream are worked in and reduced, enough to coat the slices without pooling.
Half-glazeEscoffier-era half-glaze (demi-glace) is a brown sauce reduced with stock to a syrupy gloss. A good reduced veal or game stock, thickened lightly, stands in; commercial demi-glace concentrate works if you cut the salt, since further reduction here will concentrate it again.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow saute pan, not a casserole dish. Choose one just large enough to hold the slices in a single overlapping layer so the modest quantity of sauce actually reaches them.
ChevreuilRoe deer, small and fine-grained. A saddle of farmed fallow or red deer, or the loin of a whitetail, behaves the same way; all of it should have been roasted rare to begin with, since this preparation adds no further cooking.
The dash of vinegarAdded at the end, as the sauce is finished, to cut the cream and the game. The recipe says only 'good vinegar'; a teaspoon into a cup of sauce is the order of magnitude. Taste as you go, since the point is a lift rather than a recognizable sourness.
The garnishesVilleroi quenelles are forcemeat dumplings coated in thick sauce, breaded and fried; a salpicon is a fine dice bound with sauce. Croutes hollowed from good bread, fried in butter and filled with diced mushrooms or truffle, give the same effect with a fraction of the work.
YieldA saddle of small deer yields about a pound of trimmed cooked meat, which serves four as a course. Serve on very hot plates: the sauce is emulsified with cream and dulls quickly as it cools.

A Little History

Emince means simply "sliced thin," and dishes of this kind existed in the professional French kitchen as the respectable answer to a joint already carved. Ranhofer, who ran Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894, gives dozens of these mince and hash preparations alongside the grand roasts, and they show how the mother-sauce system earned its keep: a cook with half-glaze and quenelle forcemeat on hand could turn cold leftovers into a numbered dish with a garnish and a cross-reference. The venison itself points to the period's appetite for game, when American restaurants bought wild deer and antelope from commercial market hunters, a trade the game laws of the following decades gradually curtailed. The cream-and-vinegar finish is the old sweet-sour instinct for venison, the same reflex that puts red currant jelly beside a saddle of deer.