No. 2195

Venison Grenadins a la Royale—Tenderloin

Grenadins de Filet de Chevreuil a la Royale

Trim off some grenadins from the minion fillets, each one to weigh five ounces, and pare into half hearts; after removing the sinews lard with fine larding pork (No. 4, Fig. 52), and marinate for twelve hours; dry, wipe and saute in good hot fat; drain, glaze and dress in a circle, filling the center with potato quenelles breaded and fried in clarified butter; serve a Colbert sauce (No. 451) separately.

← No. 2194 Saddle of Venison—Roasted Venison & Large Game No. 2196 Venison Noisettes a la Thierry—Tenderloin →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer writes for a brigade that already knows what a grenadin is and keeps larding pork, glaze and a saucier's repertoire on hand. Stripped of that, this is a straightforward sauté of venison tenderloin medallions with a rich butter-and-glaze sauce.

Grenadins and "minion fillets"A grenadin is a thick larded medallion, cut larger and deeper than a noisette. The filets mignons here are the venison tenderloins; at five ounces each, a pair of tenderloins off a deer will yield only about three or four grenadins, depending on the size of the animal, so scale the number of portions to what you have.
Pared into half heartsTrim each piece to a rounded half-heart shape. The point is uniform thickness so they cook evenly and dress neatly in the ring on the platter.
Larding is optional but does real workVenison tenderloin has almost no intramuscular fat and dries out fast. Fine larding pork drawn through with a needle bastes it from within; if you have no larding needle, barding the tops with thin sheet fatback or wrapping in caul achieves much the same.
The marinadeThe recipe names no marinade; for game of this kind Ranhofer's marinades are raw wine-and-aromatics preparations rather than brines, and that is almost certainly what is meant. Twelve hours in the refrigerator, not in a cool larder as the original assumes. Dry the meat thoroughly before it meets the pan or it will steam rather than colour.
The hinge: do not cook these throughSauté hot and fast in clarified butter or rendered fat, two to three minutes a side, and pull at 125-130F for medium-rare. Venison loin at 150F is grey, dry and livery-tasting, and no amount of Colbert sauce recovers it. Rest five minutes before glazing.
Glaze"Glaze" means brushing with reduced meat stock (glace de viande) for gloss, not sugar. A few tablespoons of heavily reduced brown veal or game stock, or a good commercial demi-glace reduced further, does the job.
Colbert sauceColbert in this period is essentially a brown sauce or meat glaze mounted with butter and sharpened with lemon and chopped parsley, often with Madeira; check Ranhofer's No. 451 for his own version. A well-made demi-glace whisked with cold butter off the heat and sharpened with lemon will stand in. Serve it separately as instructed so the medallions keep their crust.
Potato quenellesDuchesse-style potato: dry riced potato bound with egg yolk and butter, shaped into small ovals, breaded and fried in clarified butter. They must be stiff enough to hold shape, so drive off moisture in the pan before adding the yolks.
Clarified butterSpecified for frying the potato quenelles, because whole butter's milk solids burn at frying temperature. Ghee will do the same job, with a nuttier flavour.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's summary of more than thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it reads as a working reference for a large professional kitchen rather than a domestic cookbook — hence the cross-references to numbered sauces and larding diagrams elsewhere in the volume. Chevreuil is properly European roe deer; in Ranhofer's New York the word covered whatever venison the market supplied, largely wild American deer, since game was still bought and sold commercially before the state and federal restrictions of the following decades ended the traffic. "A la royale" in this period signals a dressed-up presentation rather than any fixed formula — here the larding, the glaze, the ring of medallions and the fried potato garnish in the centre, all of it built for service from a platter to a table of diners. The technique of larding lean game with pork fat is far older than the book and reflects a plain fact of the ingredient: wild deer carries its fat externally, if at all, and cooks have compensated for that for centuries.