No. 2197

Venison Tournedos St. Hubert—Tenderloin

Tournedos de Filet de Chevreuil St. Hubert

Pare some slices to weigh three ounces each, season and saute them briskly in a saute pan with butter; drain, wipe, glaze and dress on a bed of soubise puree (No. 723); garnish around with Spanish olives stuffed with anchovies. Serve separately a tomato sauce (No. 549), mixed with grated horseradish.

← No. 2196 Venison Noisettes a la Thierry—Tenderloin Venison & Large Game No. 2198 Woodcocks a la Cavour →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer writes for a brigade that already has stock, glaze and garnishes standing by, so the whole dish reads as four cross-references. Assembled in a home kitchen it is a fast sauté with two components made in advance.

The hinge: heat and doneness"Saute briskly" means a very hot pan and roughly two minutes a side for a three-ounce medallion, to an internal 125-130F. Venison tenderloin has almost no intramuscular fat and turns dry and liverish past medium.
ChevreuilThe French is roe deer, a small European animal. Use tenderloin or the eye of the loin from farmed or wild deer; from a large mule deer or elk, one slice will be broad and thin rather than round and thick.
"Glaze"Not sugar. Brush the drained medallions with a spoonful of glace de viande — brown stock reduced to a syrup — which is what gives them their shine. A tablespoon of well-reduced demi-glace does the same job.
Soubise pureeSoubise is a puree of onions cooked slowly in butter until sweet and colorless, bound with rice or a thick bechamel and sieved; Ranhofer's No. 723 is a version of this. Make it before the meat; it should be thick enough to hold the medallions up, not run on the plate.
Spanish olives stuffed with anchoviesLarge green olives, pitted and filled with anchovy fillet. Sold today as anchovy-stuffed olives; supermarket pimiento olives are not a substitute for the salt-and-fish note the plate depends on.
Horseradish in the tomato sauceGrate it in off the heat, at the last moment. Held hot, horseradish loses its volatile pungency within minutes and leaves only a woody taste.
PortioningThree ounces per slice, as the recipe specifies; two slices per person makes a reasonable main course, one as part of a longer menu. Cut the medallions thick — around an inch — so they can brown outside and stay rare inside.
Pan and fatA "saute pan" here is a heavy shallow pan on the stovetop, not a baking dish. Clarified butter or butter with a little oil holds up better than whole butter at the heat this needs.

A Little History

St. Hubert is the patron saint of hunters, traditionally a nobleman converted by the vision of a stag with a crucifix between its antlers, and his feast on November 3 falls in the heart of the European hunting season; in nineteenth-century French kitchens his name attached to game garnishes. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a working record of that restaurant's repertoire, and the numbered cross-references throughout — soubise at 723, tomato sauce at 549 — reflect a professional kitchen where each of those was a standing preparation rather than something made for a single dish.