No. 2248

Crepine and Sausages of Venison

Crepine et Saucisses de Chevreuil

Crepine.—Take a pound of venison minion fillets, suppress all the sinews and cut it up into medium quarter-inch squares, place these in a vessel with half as many raw truffles cut in three-sixteenths inch squares, and season with salt and spices, pour a little Madeira over and marinate for one hour. Mix in with some prepared pork farce (No. 68), three ounces of foies-gras braised and cut in three-sixteenths inch squares; after it is cold, pound the parings with a few truffle parings and put the whole together, season highly and divide the preparation into even parts each the size of an egg and shape them into flat ovals, wrap up in fresh pork "crepine" or caul fat, brush over with butter, dip in bread-crumbs and broil on a moderate fire for fifteen minutes while turning over; range them on a dish, pouring a little reduced gravy (No. 404) in the bottom, or add some Westphalian sauce (No. 561) to this.

Sausages.—Chop up three pounds of lean and sinewless venison with the same weight of fresh pork, a coffeespoonful of fine spices or else powdered sage, two coffeespoonfuls of pepper, three of salt, and three gills of water; when the whole is well chopped fill some mutton casings so as to form sausages five to six inches long; prick them and broil.

← No. 2247 Crepine of Reedbirds Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2249 Crepine of Young Rabbits →

For the Modern Kitchen

Two preparations under one heading: crepinettes (seasoned patties wrapped in caul fat and broiled) and a fresh venison sausage. Both assume a professional kitchen with a cross-referenced farce already made, so read Ranhofer's No. 68 before starting.

Crepine means caul fatThe crepine is the lacy membrane from around a pig's stomach, sold frozen by good butchers. Soak it in tepid water, sometimes with a splash of vinegar, until it unfolds without tearing, then pat dry; it melts into the patty as it broils and is what holds the loose mixture together.
Minion filletsFilets mignons here means the small tenderloin strips lying alongside the venison saddle, not steaks cut from the loin. Any well-trimmed tenderloin or backstrap will do. "Suppress all the sinews" simply means remove every scrap of silverskin and tendon.
The farce is unquantifiedRanhofer says only "some prepared pork farce (No. 68)", a pork forcemeat given elsewhere in the book; check No. 68 for its exact make-up before scaling. Roughly an equal weight to the venison, about a pound, gives patties that bind and stay moist; more than that and the venison stops reading as venison.
Truffles and foie grasRaw truffles were a market item in 1894 New York; today fresh black winter truffle is the equivalent and is priced accordingly. Preserved truffle, well drained, is a fair substitute. "Foies-gras braised" means a lobe cooked through and chilled firm before it is diced, not raw liver and not a mousse.
Gills and coffeespoonsA gill is half a cup, so three gills of water is a cup and a half — a lot, but this is a coarse-chopped sausage and the water carries the salt through the meat. A coffeespoonful is smaller than a teaspoon and was never standardised; treat it as about half a teaspoon and taste a fried scrap before filling casings.
The salt is low by modern practiceThree coffeespoons of salt for six pounds of meat is well under one percent. Modern fresh sausage is usually salted at 1.5 to 1.8 percent by weight of meat, which for six pounds is roughly 1.5 to 1.8 ounces. Adjust upward if you want the texture and seasoning cooks now expect.
Broiling timesFifteen minutes over a moderate fire, turned, suits an egg-sized oval wrapped in fat — the caul must render and colour or the patty tastes greasy. Because the mixture contains fresh pork, take the crepinettes and the sausages to 160F at the centre. The sheep casings called for are narrow, so 5- to 6-inch links cook quickly; prick them as directed or they split.
Sauce and yieldWestphalian sauce (No. 561) is built on smoked ham and Madeira, and either it or the reduced gravy is what keeps the broiled patties from eating dry. A pound of venison plus a pound of farce, divided into egg-sized ovals of about two ounces, yields roughly sixteen to twenty crepinettes; the sausage recipe uses three pounds of venison to three of pork plus the water, and freezes well raw.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's summing-up of roughly three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this page shows the kitchen's habit of squeezing two uses out of one carcass: the trimmed tenderloin and its parings become a luxury crepinette with truffle and foie gras, while the coarser lean goes into sausage stretched with fresh pork. Crepinette takes its name from the caul, crépine, and the technique is French charcuterie of long standing — a patty wrapped in fat so it bastes itself on the grill. Venison in Ranhofer's day largely meant market game, wild deer sold commercially before the state game laws of the early twentieth century closed that trade; the neighbouring numbers for reedbirds and young rabbits belong to the same vanished supply. The sausage seasoning, spice or else powdered sage, points to sage's long association with fresh pork.