No. 2185

Saddle of Antelope, Huntress Style

Selle d'Antilope a la Chasseresse

Procure a fine thick saddle of antelope; raise the sirloin from one part, remove the skin and lard with small lardons (No. 3, Fig. 52); lift up the minion fillets, suppress their sinews and score with large slices of truffles; pare the remainder of the meat and chop it up with as much fat pork, season with mixed spices (No. 168) and add two eggs. Make a stock with the parings and bones of the antelope. Marinate the sirloin and minion fillets and cook them in a brisk oven. Make small balls with the chopped meats; bread-crumb, English style (No. 13), and bake them in a slow oven; reduce some espagnole sauce (No. 414) and Madeira with the prepared stock, and when a consistent sauce is obtained, put in the meat balls, whole chestnuts and stuffed olives (No. 395). Prepare a bread crouton five inches wide, eight long and two and a half high; hollow it out lengthways on both ends and on each side form semicircles two inches in diameter; carve the croutons nicely, fry in butter, and fasten firmly to a dish. Cut the sirloin up lengthwise on the bias, lay the pieces in the hollow and the minion fillets in the center. Fasten a skewer garnished with cocks'-combs and kidneys and crawfish in the middle, and one on each of the two ends, and around with croustades garnished with the above prepared garnishing. Serve a huntress sauce (No. 481) with the meat.

← No. 2184 Minced Venison Venison & Large Game No. 2186 Saddle of Venison a l'Athalin →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a stockpot already going and a numbered index at hand. Reduced to its bones this is a larded, marinated saddle roasted hot and fast, served with a Madeira-espagnole garnish of forcemeat balls, chestnuts and olives on a carved bread plinth.

The hinge: cook the saddle rare and rest itAntelope and venison saddle carry almost no intramuscular fat, and the larding is there because the meat dries out past medium-rare. A "brisk oven" is conventionally read as somewhere around 425F, hot enough to colour and cook a thick loin quickly; pull it at 125-130F internal and rest at least 15 minutes before slicing on the bias as directed.
Antelope itselfWild pronghorn cannot be sold commercially in the United States, and farmed antelope is limited to a few exotic-ranch species such as nilgai. The practical substitute is farmed red deer or fallow venison, or a hunter's own animal; ask for the whole saddle, bone in, roughly 6-8 lb, which serves eight to ten with the garnish.
"Minion fillets"Filets mignons in Ranhofer's sense means the two small tenderloins lying under the saddle bones, not steaks. Lift them out whole, strip the silverskin, and stud them with truffle slices; they cook in a fraction of the time the sirloin takes and should go into the oven considerably later.
LardingHis lardons No. 3 are strips of back fat drawn through the meat with a larding needle. Barding the saddle with a sheet of pork fatback or thin-sliced fresh side pork tied on is the low-equipment compromise, though it bastes from the outside rather than from within during a hot, short roast.
Oven temperatures"Brisk" is conventionally read as roughly 425F for the saddle, and a "slow oven" as somewhere in the 275-325F range, so the crumb sets without colouring hard before the interior cooks; the balls then finish by simmering in the sauce.
The cross-referencesNo. 168 is Ranhofer's mixed spice, a blend of the epices fines type; No. 13 is his English-style breading, egg and crumbs; No. 414 is espagnole, a brown veal-based mother sauce; No. 481 is the huntress sauce, a chasseur-type brown sauce with shallot, mushroom and wine. A good demi-glace stands in for both brown sauces.
The skewers and the croutonThe hatelets of cockscombs, cock kidneys and crayfish and the fried bread plinth are decoration for a service platter, not eating. Cockscombs are effectively unobtainable now; the dish loses nothing edible if the skewers are dropped and the sliced saddle is arranged on a warmed platter with the garnish around it.
Stuffed olivesHis No. 395 olives are pitted and filled by hand with a forcemeat, not the pimento-stuffed jar variety. Large green olives stuffed with a little of the same chopped meat mixture stay closer to the intent, and they should go into the sauce only at the end so they do not turn salty and soft.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of his thirty-odd years as chef of Delmonico's in New York, and it belongs to the section of the book where American market game meets French grande cuisine. Chasseresse is simply the feminine of chasseur, huntress rather than hunter, a naming convention French kitchens used freely for game garnishes; the accompanying sauce chasseur, with its shallots and mushrooms, was already the standard idiom for anything shot. Antelope appeared on New York menus in the 1890s alongside the wild ducks, prairie chicken and buffalo that filled restaurant game lists in that decade -- a commercial trade in wild meat that the Lacey Act of 1900 and subsequent state laws effectively ended. The elaborate presentation, with its carved bread socle and ornamental skewers, suggests something of the service a la russe manner of display: the platter seems to have been meant to be seen whole by the room before it was carved down.