Game

Game covers venison, wild boar, hare, rabbit, wildfowl and the rest, and what they have in common is that the animal chose its own diet and took its own exercise. The consequences are consistent. Game is very lean, because a wild animal carries far less fat than a farmed one; it is dark, because it works hard and carries more myoglobin; it is strongly flavoured, and the flavour varies with species, age, season, diet and how the animal was killed and handled. Variability is the defining characteristic and no two carcasses are the same.

For charcuterie that leanness dictates the approach. Almost every traditional game sausage adds pork fat, commonly a third or more of the mix, because game fat is scarce, often unpleasant in flavour, and prone to rancidity. Venison salami, wild boar sausage, jagdwurst in its various forms, the Alpine game preparations and Landjäger all follow that pattern. The lean brings colour and depth, the pork brings the fat phase.

Seasoning follows too. Juniper is the classic partner, along with bay, thyme and black pepper, and the reason is that resinous and aromatic flavours cut gaminess rather than adding to it. Traditions with a lot of game converged on those spices independently.

Handling in the field is where game is genuinely different. A farmed animal goes from slaughter to a chill in minutes under inspection. A shot animal may lie warm, may be gut-shot, and is dressed in the open, so the initial bacterial load and the speed of chilling are far more variable. Meat for curing should come from a clean kill, promptly gralloched and cooled, and anything gut-shot or slow to cool is for the cook rather than the curesmith.

The parasite point is the one that must not be soft-pedalled. Wild boar and other wild pigs are a recognised Trichinella reservoir, and unlike farmed pork in a controlled system they cannot be assumed free of it. Bear, and in some regions other wild carnivores and omnivores, carry the same risk. Trichinella is destroyed by adequate cooking, by a validated freezing schedule, or by a validated cure-and-dry process, and it is not destroyed by a short ferment, by smoke, or by salt alone. Wild game also carries Toxoplasma, and deer in some regions carry E. coli.