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Venison with Currant Jelly

A venison dish prepared with vinegar, spices, currant jelly, claret wine, and a sauce made from the meat scraps.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and basil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 688 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Venison with Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate

  1. Rub the venison with vinegar, red pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Lard it with strips of salt pork rolled in seasoned bread crumbs.

  3. Season with sweet marjoram, sweet basil, and pepper.

  4. Rub the whole with currant jelly and pour over the claret wine.

  5. Let it stand overnight.

Roast

  1. The next morning, cover the venison with a paste made of flour and water, half an inch thick.

  2. Cover with soft paper and secure with strings.

  3. Place in a dripping pan with some claret, butter, and water, and baste often.

  4. Half an hour before serving, remove the paste and paper, baste with butter, and dredge with flour to brown.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, boil scraps of venison with 3 pints of water, cloves, mace, nutmeg, salt, and cayenne until reduced to 1 pint.

  2. Skim off the fat and strain.

  3. Add currant jelly, claret, and butter rolled in flour.

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. Marjoram + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together688 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + basiltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Vinegar + winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,493 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Pork + marjoramtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together883 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Venison
Is the main meat, whose lean flesh becomes tender and juicy through marinating and slow basting.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity, and thickens and glazes the sauce.
Claret wine
Adds acidity and flavour that tenderise the meat and deepen the sauce.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour that keeps the lean venison moist as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the crust brown and the sauce feel smooth.
Flour
Forms the protective paste and, dredged on top, helps the surface brown.

The step that matters

Covering the venison with the flour-and-water paste. The paste and paper form a barrier that slows moisture loss, so the thick joint cooks gently without drying out. If the seal is thin or torn, the meat dries and the surface scorches.

Swap the basil

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, vinegar, pepper, pork, bread, marjoram, wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Basilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, vinegar, pepper, pork, bread, marjoram, wine. 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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