Roast Fawn
When the fawn is thoroughly washed, stuff with a forcemeat made of bread crumbs, chopped pork, the juice of half of a lemon, a very little grated nutmeg, pepper and salt, moisten with cream, bind with beaten egg and melted butter. Sew up the fawn, turning the legs under, and binding close to the body. Bind on thin slices of fat pork, roast in a quick oven. Allow twenty-one minutes to a pound. Twenty-one minutes before it is dished, remove the pork, and brown the fawn, basting with melted butter. At the last dredge with flour, let this brown, froth with butter, and serve. Use an abundance of parsley for garnishing. Hares and rabbits can be roasted in the same way, also a kid.
A whole-carcass game roast written for a cook who expected the butcher or the hunter to deliver the animal dressed and ready. The method — bard, roast hot, unwrap and brown, then dredge and froth — is sound; the timing is not.
- Sourcing, before anything elseA whole fawn is not something you can legally buy or take in most of the United States, where game laws protect immature deer and the sale of wild-taken game is generally prohibited; rules differ across Europe, where licensed game dealers may sell young deer. The recipe's own closing line points the way: farmed kid (young goat), hare or rabbit takes the same treatment, as does a boned loin or leg of farmed venison.
- "A quick oven"425-450F. That heat is what sets the surface and renders the barding fat; it is not a temperature you hold for hours.
- Twenty-one minutes to a pound is far too longThe figure reflects a period taste for well-done meat. Lean game dries out badly past medium-rare. Roast to an internal temperature of 130-135F at the thickest part and rest it, which on a small carcass or a leg will be a fraction of the stated time.
- The stuffing and the meat want different temperaturesA forcemeat containing raw pork and egg needs to reach 160-165F throughout, which cannot be reached without ruining the venison around it. Bake the forcemeat separately in a buttered dish and serve it alongside.
- "Fat pork"Salt pork or fatback cut in thin sheets, tied over the meat as barding. Unsmoked pork back fat or thin-sliced fatty bacon does the same job; if using bacon, expect a smoky note the original did not have.
- "Froth with butter"After the flour dredge has toasted, spoon or brush more melted butter over the surface so it bubbles up in the oven heat and crisps the flour into a thin, blistered crust. It happens in a minute or two and is a finish, not a cooking step.
- Seasoning the forcemeatBread crumbs here means dry crumbs from stale bread, not packaged fine crumbs; moisten with cream until the mixture just holds together. "A very little grated nutmeg" means exactly that — enough to be noticed only if it is missing.
- Yield and serviceFigure roughly 6 oz of boneless meat per person. Venison should be carved across the grain and served hot on warmed plates, since the fat sets quickly; a sharp jelly or a pan sauce deglazed with red wine suits it better than gravy thickened with the dredging flour.
Game chapters in American cookbooks of this kind still assumed a household supply of wild meat, and this recipe belongs to that world — a whole small carcass, trussed with the legs turned under, barded in pork fat because deer carries almost no fat of its own. The forcemeat of crumbs, chopped pork, lemon, nutmeg and egg recalls English farced-hare cookery, and the closing note that "hares and rabbits can be roasted in the same way, also a kid" shows how such recipes were understood: one method for a whole class of lean young animals rather than a formula for a single dish. A page like this reads as the tail end of a domestic tradition rather than a live instruction; commercial venison today comes largely from farmed red and fallow deer.