No. 2191

Saddle of Venison, Gastronome

Selle de Chevreuil, Gastronome

Trim and lard a saddle of venison; lay it in a baking pan covered with slices of fat pork, carrots, onions and a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme and bay leaf; moisten with white wine and stock (No. 194a) and cook in the oven, basting at frequent intervals with white melted butter; when done and of a fine color cut it up lengthways of the meat and reconstruct it as before, strain the stock, remove all the fat and reduce, add Marsala wine, serve the sauce separately. Garnish the ends with mushrooms or cepes and olives stuffed with anchovies, and gastronome potatoes (No. 2789) at the ends. Serve also a Colbert sauce (No. 451) with the meat.

← No. 2190 Saddle of Venison—Larded—Aigrelette Sauce Venison & Large Game No. 2192 Saddle of Venison—Breaded—Black Cherry Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a butcher, a larding needle and a kitchen brigade with a numbered sauce repertoire at hand. The dish is straightforward once you accept that the roasting is really a covered braise-roast and that the meat must come out rare.

What the saddle isThe saddle is the whole loin section with both loins attached, cut across the backbone. A roe deer (chevreuil) saddle is small and will stretch to about four servings; a farmed red or fallow deer saddle from a game dealer will run 4-6 lb and serve six to eight. Ask for it chined and the silverskin removed.
Internal temperature is the whole dishVenison loin is lean and turns dry and liver-flavoured past medium. Roast to 125-130F at the thickest point and rest 15 minutes under foil. At the oven heat below that is roughly 25-35 minutes for a roe saddle, longer for a large red deer one, but go by the thermometer and not the clock.
Oven heatRanhofer gives none. Start at 450F for 10 minutes to colour the fat and larding, then drop to 350F for the remainder.
Larding, and the alternativeLarding means threading strips of chilled pork fatback through the meat with a larding needle. If you have no needle, barding does most of the work: cover the loins with sheets of fatback or thin unsmoked bacon and tie them on, removing them for the last few minutes to brown.
"Slices of fat pork"Fresh unsalted pork fatback or fat salt pork, not smoked bacon. If using salt pork, blanch it two minutes first or the reduced sauce will be too salty once it tightens.
Stock No. 194a and the sauceThat is one of Ranhofer's numbered basic stocks; a good unsalted veal or brown chicken stock stands in. Strain the pan liquid, spoon off every trace of fat, reduce to a light coating consistency, then add Marsala off the boil, about 2-3 tablespoons for a cup of sauce, and taste before adding more.
Colbert sauceHis No. 451 is the classic Colbert: meat glaze finished with butter, lemon and chopped parsley, sometimes with a little Madeira. Serving it alongside the Marsala pan sauce is period practice; one sauce is enough for most tables today.
Carving and reassemblingCutting "lengthways of the meat" means slicing each loin into long thin strips parallel to the bone rather than into medallions, then laying them back in place so the saddle arrives whole. Do it on a warmed board and work fast, as thin venison slices lose heat almost immediately.
GarnishCèpes are porcini; any firm brown mushroom sautéed in butter serves. Olives stuffed with anchovy are still sold as such. Gastronome potatoes are Ranhofer's own numbered preparation (No. 2789); butter-glazed small new potatoes cover the same ground.
"White melted butter"Most likely clarified butter, which is what one would want for basting over a long roast, since milk solids scorch.

A Little History

This is No. 2191 of Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, where the numbered cross-references function as a working kitchen index rather than a book to read straight through. Chevreuil is European roe deer, a small, fine-grained animal that American kitchens of the period substituted with local deer; Ranhofer keeps the French name because the whole dish is French haute cuisine grammar - lard the lean meat, roast it on a bed of aromatics under pork fat, reduce the moistening liquid into a fortified-wine sauce. "Gastronome" is one of the garnish names Ranhofer uses across the book; here it attaches to his numbered potato preparation. Larding was routine work in the nineteenth century because wild venison, and most game, carried almost no internal fat; the technique fell away later, as fattier farmed venison and reliable thermometers made it easier to simply stop cooking the meat sooner.