Why it works: Venison and red wine work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 167 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Venison Haunch
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Prepare the venison as you would mutton.
Place the venison in a baking pan and lard it with a little bacon.
Bake and serve
Add 1 pint of water and ½ cup of red wine.
Season with salt and cayenne pepper.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) until cooked through.
Serve with or without gravy.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Venison + red winetop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together167 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Red wine + peppertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,075 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
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Venison + peppertop 28% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together955 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Venison haunch
- The main cut of meat, which becomes tender and sliced for serving during slow roasting.
- Bacon
- Strips threaded through the lean meat add fat, moisture and savoury flavour as they render.
- Red wine
- Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the pan liquid, which forms the base for any gravy.
The step that matters
Bake at 400°F (200°C) until cooked through. Venison is very lean, so overcooking dries it out quickly. Checking that the centre has reached the target doneness, rather than relying only on the clock, helps keep the meat juicy.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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