No. 2301

Venison Hash, American Style and with Poached Eggs

Hachis de Chevreuil a l'Americaine et aux Oeufs Poches

Fry in a sautoir some shallots, parsley and chives; do not color them; moisten with half white wine and half stock (No. 194a), add as much espagnole sauce (No. 414), reduce, then put in two-thirds of venison and one-third of mushrooms, both cut up in quarter-inch squares. Prepare a border with potato croquette preparation softened with eggs, push it through a cornet on to the edge of the inside basin of the dish, using a channeled socket; then fill the border with the hash, bestrew it with bread raspings, pour over butter and brown in a hot oven.

A more simple hash can be prepared with cold roasted venison and cooked potatoes, equal quantities of both cut in quarter-inch squares. Heat without boiling in a poivrade sauce (No. 522), seasoned to taste. Dish it up very hot and surround with croutons fried in butter.

← No. 2300 Hashed Veal Cakes, Brittany Style Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2302 Hashed Woodcock in a Croustade with Soft Egg →

For the Modern Kitchen

A Delmonico's entrée written for a kitchen that already had stock, espagnole and poivrade standing by. Two versions are given: a piped-border gratin and a simpler sauté; both depend on leftover roast venison and on never letting the sauce boil once the meat is in.

The hinge: no boilingThe second, simpler version says explicitly to "heat without boiling." Already-roasted venison turns dry and grainy if it simmers in the sauce: bring the sauce to temperature first, fold in the diced meat, and hold it just below a simmer only long enough to heat through.
SautoirA shallow pan with straight sides, close to what is sold now as a 10-inch saute pan. Any wide pan that lets the wine and stock reduce quickly will serve.
Espagnole and poivradeEspagnole is the brown mother sauce — brown roux, brown stock, mirepoix and tomato, cooked down for hours. Poivrade is a peppery game derivative of it, sharpened with vinegar and crushed peppercorns and often finished with marinade from the venison. Roughly a cup of either is enough for a pound of meat; a well-reduced game or beef demi-glace is the usual modern stand-in.
Bread raspingsDried crusts grated to a coarse powder, drier and harder than packaged crumbs. Crusts dried in a low oven and pulsed briefly give the same effect.
The piped borderPotato croquette preparation is a stiff duchesse-type mixture: dry riced potato, egg yolk, butter, seasoning. "Softened with eggs" means loosened with egg until it will pass through a piping bag. The "channeled socket" is a fluted or star tip; the "cornet" is the bag.
Hot ovenThe book gives no temperatures; take "hot" as roughly the modern 425-450F range. The border is already cooked, so the oven is only browning the crumbs and setting the piped potato -- a few minutes, or a minute or two under a broiler.
The poached eggs of the titleThe instructions never mention them. In practice the eggs go on top at the moment of service, one per portion, poached soft and drained well so the water does not thin the sauce. Add them after the gratin comes out of the oven.
Dice and proportionQuarter-inch dice throughout, two parts venison to one part mushroom in the first version, equal venison and cooked potato in the second. The uniform cut is what makes the hash hold together on the spoon rather than reading as sauce with lumps in it.
YieldThe recipe gives no quantities. As a rough guide, about a pound of cooked venison, a cup to a cup and a half of sauce, and a pound of potato for the border would serve four.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the working repertoire of Delmonico's in New York. Hashes like this existed because a restaurant of that scale roasted whole saddles and haunches of deer and needed a dignified second life for the trim; the same logic produced the hashed veal and hashed woodcock entries on either side of it in this section. The venison would likely have been wild deer, sold in city markets before state game laws and the Lacey Act of 1900 curtailed commercial traffic in wild game; a cook today is more likely working with farmed venison, which is leaner and milder.