FROM WOODS TO THE TABLE

The old cookbooks don't lie: Flipping through their meat chapters reveals a flow chart of the highs and lows of venison popularity over the years.

Early American cookbooks, the ones published before 1900, are full of venison recipes, as well as recipes for duck, wild turkey, rabbit and squirrel. In my grandma's well-worn copy of the popular "American Woman's Cook Book," from 1938, venison warrants a handful of entries in the game chapter. Yet by the time we get to my mom's 1973 "Betty Crocker Cookbook," I can't find a single mention of venison. The meat chapter, at one time home to a menagerie of edible animals, focused mainly on the big three: beef, chicken and pork (with lamb a distant fourth).

Although the "Martha Stewart Living Cookbook" from 2000 does include a token recipe for farm-raised venison loin, most mainstream cookbooks have abandoned venison cookery. Culinary questions about game have been officially redirected to specialty outdoor stores. (My recent visit to Cabela's confirmed their foray into the ambitious camp kitchen. Next to an immense display of cauldrons, slicers and sausage stuffers, a bookcase held numerous venison cookbooks.)

The lack of professional guidance may be a hidden blessing. Most fans of venison possess strong independent streaks and actually prefer to wing it. Because eating venison is so wound up with hunting venison, perhaps cruising books for the perfect recipe and then following it to the letter obscures the point of it all.

Hunting is an improvisational act, based on lightning-quick responses to the natural environment. Good cooking works the same way. It is the art of responding to ingredients to create delicious food that satisfies a particular, personal and present hunger.

I think the best venison recipes are deeply personal and evoke the time and place in which they were first created. All of the hunters I talked to spoke only of their signature dishes -- stroganoff, a venison and apple wine stew, venison chili and venison cooked with wild rice -- as if they felt no further need to experiment. When it came to cooking what they had brought down, each felt that they had reached the peak of their own culinary powers.

The art of the hunt

The hunt is an important part of eating venison, for the cooking process begins with the first shot. Good decisions made at that moment and in the minutes afterward ensure good-tasting meat; bad decisions can lead to gamey-tasting meat.

Imagine, after sitting stiffly for many hours in the cold air, perched high on a frame screwed to a creaking pine tree, the hunter spots a deer. And with curling fingers as brittle as ice cracking, he or she fires and brings it down with a swift well-placed shot.

Any hunter concerned with both humane harvesting and good-tasting meat will always try to make their first shot good, to avoid any preshot anxiety in the animal, which is known to send a rush of sour-tasting fear through its muscles. And luck is with them if the weather is cold enough to mimic refrigerator temperatures (40 degrees Fahrenheit or lower); the quicker the deer cools, the sweeter the meat.

A meaningful meal

I may not track deer, but I do like to follow their trails when I'm in the woods. Deer trails can be surprisingly wide and well-worn, allowing me to walk with sure footing, my attention fully attuned to croppings of edible mushrooms, berries and other things that a deer might also sniff.

For sheer succulence, I can think of no better way to cook a venison loin than in a salt crust. I like to add roughly chopped juniper berries and fronds before sealing the loin in its coffin of salt. The fresh juniper appeals to my imagination as much as it does my taste: When I crack the salt crust, vapors reminiscent of gin and pine roll up, mixing with the scent of sweet venison.

Rillettes may take their name from the French tradition of stewing pork in its own fat, but it also shares lineage with the American Indian pemmican (buffalo or venison jerky pounded with plenty of tallow and dried berries). They also taste divine in the way that only fat can. It's a holiday treat, conjuring up images of deer fattened on a high-calorie slush of French pâte spices and fall herbs, and it's well worth the indulgence.

I also like to make a venison stew, in part because everyone else seems to be making one at this time of year and I can't resist synchronized seasonal cooking. I started with the idea of shepherd's pie with its mashed potato lid and gradually worked my way up to a billowy parsnip topper, underlined with sweetness and as light and pale as fog.

Keep in mind that stews are naturally elastic and can accommodate just about anything you want to throw into them. In fact, they seem to turn out better when I let intuition guide the additions and omissions -- always a wise policy when dealing with what was once a wild animal.