No. 2189

Saddle of Venison, Tyrolese Style

Selle de Chevreuil a la Tyrolienne

Prepare and roast the saddle the same as the one with currant jelly (No. 2193); detach the glaze from the pan with a little port wine, a small quantity of espagnole sauce (No. 414), and into it put as much currant jelly, then strain through a fine sieve. Lay the meat on a long dish, pour some good gravy (No. 404) over and surround with tartlets of sour apple marmalade covered with puff paste parings (No. 146); serve the sauce apart.

← No. 2188 Saddle of Venison a la Morton Venison & Large Game No. 2190 Saddle of Venison—Larded—Aigrelette Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade that already has espagnole and puff paste on hand, and he sends you to four other numbered recipes rather than repeating himself. Reassembled, this is a roast saddle of venison with a port-and-currant pan sauce, garnished with little apple tarts.

The hinge: internal temperatureVenison saddle is very lean and turns dry and liverish past medium-rare. Roast to 125-130F at the thickest point of the loin and rest it 15 minutes; carry-over will take it a few degrees higher. A hot oven, 425-450F, for a short time gives a better crust than a long moderate roast.
Chevreuil means roe deerThe French term is specifically roe deer, a small animal whose whole saddle serves four or five. A saddle from farmed red deer or American venison is considerably larger; buy a bone-in saddle of about 4-5 lb, or two loins, and adjust timing by weight rather than by the clock.
Larding, or a substituteNineteenth-century venison saddles were routinely larded with strips of pork fat because there is no intramuscular fat to baste the meat. Barding the top with thin sheets of fatback or caul, tied on, does the same work with less knife time.
Espagnole and "good gravy"No. 414 is a long-simmered brown sauce built on roux and brown stock. A good commercial or homemade demi-glace stands in for it; a few tablespoons is all this pan sauce needs. The "good gravy" of No. 404 is a clear brown roasting jus, not a thickened flour gravy.
Quantities are not givenRanhofer says "a little port," "a small quantity" of espagnole and "as much currant jelly" as sauce. Read it as roughly equal parts espagnole and jelly, loosened with port and the pan deglazings, then strained. Start with 2 tablespoons of each per four servings and taste for sweetness.
Puff paste paringsNo. 146 is puff pastry, and "parings" means the trimmings left from cutting other pastries out - re-rolled scraps, which puff unevenly and were considered good enough for a garnish. Any all-butter puff pastry works for the tartlet shells.
Sour apple marmaladeRead this as a thick apple purée cooked down to a paste firm enough to hold its shape, rather than a loose preserve; how much sugar went into it is not stated here. Cook down Bramleys or Granny Smiths with a little sugar until a spoon leaves a clean track; it should sit in the tartlet and cut the richness of the sauce.
ServingThe sauce goes to the table separately, as Ranhofer directs, while the gravy is poured over the meat. Plan on a tartlet per person and carve the loin off the bone in thin slices across the grain.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as an encyclopedic record of the restaurant's repertoire, and its cross-referenced numbering system reflects a professional kitchen with stocks, sauces and pastes already standing. The "Tyrolese" name here accompanies a pairing of game with fruit - currant jelly in the sauce, sour apple in the tartlets - though in classical French kitchens "à la tyrolienne" more often indicated onion and tomato, so the label's link to Alpine game cookery is suggestive rather than established. That sweet-sour treatment of venison is in any case much older than any national label: medieval and early modern European cooks sauced game with verjuice, wine and fruit, and the currant-jelly-with-venison habit survived into American cooking long after the rest of the sauce was forgotten. Ranhofer's own alternative, No. 2193, is the saddle served with currant jelly, which suggests he saw the Tyrolese version as the dressed-up form of a familiar dish.