No. 2186

Saddle of Venison a l'Athalin

Selle de Chevreuil a l'Athalin

For cutting up a venison saddle see Fig. 322. Pare a saddle of venison, removing the skin covering the sirloin; lard it with lardons (No. 2, Fig. 52) across the grain of the meat and marinate for twelve hours in cold cooked marinade (No. 114). Put it in a baking pan with bards of fat pork on top and the marinade; pour butter over and when half cooked baste with more butter and besprinkle with flour. Set the parings into a sautoir with a stalk of celery, onions containing cloves and a bunch of parsley garnished with garlic, thyme and bay leaf; moisten with red wine and stock (No. 194a), boil and simmer for one hour, then thicken lightly with a little kneaded butter (No. 579); remove the saddle from the roasting pan and pour in some gravy (No. 404) to detach the glaze, then add it to the sauce and strain the whole through a tammy, skim off the fat and place a third of the sauce on a dish, dressing the saddle on top; serve the remainder separately in a sauce-boat and some currant jelly on a plate.

← No. 2185 Saddle of Antelope, Huntress Style Venison & Large Game No. 2187 Saddle of Venison a la Macmahon →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer wrote for a brigade with a stockpot always going and a page of cross-references at hand. Stripped of the numbered callbacks, this is a larded, marinated venison saddle with a red wine sauce built from its own trimmings.

The hinge: internal temperatureVenison saddle is loin, and it has almost no intramuscular fat. Pull it at 125-130F at the thickest point for rare to medium-rare and rest it 15 minutes; past 140F it turns dry and livery no matter how much butter is basted over it.
Oven heatRanhofer gives no temperature. A workable modern approach is to start at 450F for about 15 minutes to set the surface, then drop to 350F for the remainder. Timing varies widely with the size and shape of the saddle, so go by the thermometer rather than the clock.
Cooked marinade (No. 114)A marinade cuite: typically wine, or vinegar and wine, simmered with sliced onion, carrot, celery, garlic, thyme, bay and peppercorns, then cooled completely before it touches the meat. The recipe specifies twelve hours; do it in the refrigerator.
Larding and bardsLardons are strips of pork back fat threaded through the meat with a larding needle; bards are thin sheets of the same fat laid over the top. Blanched salt pork or unsmoked fatback works, or wrap the saddle in caul fat. Thick-cut bacon substitutes but adds smoke and cure the dish was not built around.
Sautoir, tammy, kneaded butterA sautoir is a straight-sided sauté pan; use any wide saucepan. A tammy is a fine woolen straining cloth, replaced by a chinois or a sieve lined with muslin. Kneaded butter is beurre manié, equal parts soft butter and flour worked to a paste and whisked in off the boil.
The sauce, in plain orderSimmer the parings with the aromatics in red wine and stock for an hour, thicken lightly with kneaded butter, then detach the glaze in the roasting pan with gravy (the recipe's No. 404) and add that to the pot. Strain, skim, and correct for salt. Reduce rather than adding more flour if it seems thin.
The flour dustingSprinkling flour over the half-cooked, buttered saddle browns into a light crust and thickens the drippings. Use it sparingly; a heavy hand gives a pasty exterior.
Yield and serviceA saddle of this size serves six to eight. A third of the sauce goes under the meat, the rest in a sauce-boat, with currant jelly alongside on its own plate as the recipe directs.

A Little History

Chevreuil is roe deer, a small European species whose saddle rarely exceeds a few pounds; Charles Ranhofer, writing for Delmonico's in New York in 1894, would in practice have been cooking American deer, which run larger. The nineteenth-century French repertoire attached personal names to dozens of garnishes and preparations, and à l'Athalin is generally traced to Baron Athalin, a soldier and aide-de-camp in the court of Louis-Philippe, though the link is traditional rather than documented and the dish's connection to him is long lost. What survives is the method: larding and a cooked marinade were the standard answer to lean, close-grained wild meat, and the sauce is built from the animal's own parings. Currant jelly beside venison remains familiar on American tables today.