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Rotis De Venaison

A roasted venison haunch wrapped in a dough and basted with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and red currant work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 267 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Rotis De Venaison

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Rub the haunch with a mixture of flour and black pepper to keep moisture away.

  2. Wrap the haunch in a hot water and fat dough.

  3. Cover the wrapped haunch with paper and tie the paper with string.

Roast and brown

  1. Roast the wrapped haunch in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 4 hours, basting frequently.

  2. Remove the paper and dough from the haunch.

  3. Sprinkle the haunch with coarse sea salt and flour.

  4. Baste the haunch with melted butter until browned.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

  1. Pepper + red curranttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together267 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Venison + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together957 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Venison + red curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together81 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, protected by the dough and paper during the long roast.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that keeps moisture away from the meat's surface.
Fat (for dough)
Makes the hot water dough pliable and sealing, so it encloses the haunch.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the surface brown during basting.

The step that matters

Removing the paper and dough before browning. The dough and paper trap steam and keep the surface pale. Once they are removed and the haunch is basted with butter, the drier surface can brown through Maillard reactions, which need dry heat to develop.

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, flour, pepper, butter):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Red currantthe original
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, flour, pepper, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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