No. 2193

Saddle of Venison, Port Wine Sauce and Currant Jelly

Selle de Chevreuil a la Sauce Oporto et a la Gelee de Groseilles

Cut the saddle from a roebuck the same as a saddle of mutton, leaving one rib adhere to the end of the loin on both sides; remove the haunch, cutting it off rounded or straight, while crossing the thick loin end; pare the surplus fat and remove the skin carefully that covers the sirloin; lard it with two rows of lardons (No. 3, Fig. 52) inserting them into the meat across the saddle, and the entire length of the sirloin. Roast it either on the spit or in the oven, detach the pan, glaze with a little gravy (No. 404), strain this through a sieve, skim off the fat and pour it over the saddle. Serve separately, but at the same time some currant jelly or port wine, and jelly sauce made by dissolving the jelly in port wine and thickening it with brown sauce (No. 414).

← No. 2192 Saddle of Venison—Breaded—Black Cherry Sauce Venison & Large Game No. 2194 Saddle of Venison—Roasted →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a butcher, a spit and a kitchen already holding gravy and espagnole in the stockpot. The dish itself is simple: a lean roast served rare, with a sweet-sharp wine and jelly sauce alongside.

The hinge: do not overcook itA larded saddle is still very lean meat, and the whole point of the port and jelly is to sauce something served rare to medium-rare. Pull it at an internal 125-130F at the thickest part of the loin and rest it 15 minutes; past about 140F roe and other deer loin turns dry and livery no matter how much fat has been threaded through it.
Chevreuil means roe deerRoebuck is the small European deer, and its saddle is correspondingly modest. It is not generally available in the United States. Farmed fallow, red deer or axis venison is the nearest substitute; a saddle of farmed red deer is considerably larger, so scale the timing to weight and temperature rather than the clock. Wild-shot venison generally cannot be bought here, only given.
Larding, and what to do insteadThe two rows of lardons are strips of pork back fat drawn through the meat with a larding needle to keep it moist. If you have no needle, bard instead: lay sheets of fatback or unsmoked streaky bacon over the loin, tie with butcher's twine, and remove for the last ten minutes so the surface can brown.
Oven temperatureRanhofer gives none because he expected a spit. Roast hot and fast: 425-450F for a small saddle, or sear it at that heat for 15 minutes and drop to 350F for a larger one. The saddle should sit on the bones, fat side up, on a rack over the pan.
The cross-referencesNo. 404 is Ranhofer's gravy, essentially a reduced brown veal stock; No. 414 is the brown sauce called for here, a flour-thickened espagnole-type sauce. In a modern kitchen, a well-reduced dark veal or game stock stands in for both, with the sauce tightened by reduction rather than roux.
The sauce itselfMelt about 1/2 cup redcurrant jelly into 1 cup port over low heat, reduce by a third, then bind with an equal volume of the brown sauce and strain. Keep it just under a simmer once the jelly is in; boiled hard it goes cloyingly sweet and loses the currant acidity that cuts the fat.
Detaching the pan"Detach the pan" is deglazing: pour off the fat, loosen the caramelised residue with a little stock or wine over heat, then strain and skim. That, not the port sauce, is what goes over the meat.
ServingThe accompaniment goes to the table separately, at the same moment as the roast. Ranhofer offers plain currant jelly or the port-and-jelly sauce as alternatives, not a single garnish.

A Little History

Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after some thirty years running the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows the book's habit of thinking in French while cooking for Americans: selle de chevreuil is the roe deer saddle of the French sporting table, prepared here for a city restaurant that could obtain game from dealers when the season allowed. The pairing of venison with redcurrant jelly is usually described as an English habit, associated with the practice of serving sweet fruit preserves with strong dark meats; the port-and-jelly sauce is a close relative of Cumberland sauce, which appears in print in the same general period. Larding a saddle was routine work in a period when deer were lean and hung game was the norm.