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To Roast Yenison

A roasted venison prepared with claret wine, currant jelly, butter, spices, and a sauce made from venison scraps.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Home for the Friendless (Chicago, Ill.) · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Roast Yenison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the venison

  1. Wash a saddle of venison thoroughly in several waters.

  2. Rub the venison with vinegar, red pepper, and a little salt.

  3. Lard the venison with strips of salt pork rolled in seasoned bread crumbs.

  4. Season the venison with sweet marjoram, sweet basil, one teaspoon each, and pepper.

  5. Rub the venison with currant jelly.

  6. Pour one bottle of claret wine over the venison.

  7. Let the venison stand overnight.

Roast

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

  2. Cover the venison with soft paper and secure it with strings.

  3. Place the venison in a dripping pan with claret, butter, and water, and baste it very often.

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

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, take one and a half pounds of venison scraps, three pints of water, a few cloves, a few blades of mace, half a nutmeg, salt, and cayenne pepper to taste.

  2. Boil the mixture down to a pint.

  3. Skim off the fat and strain the sauce.

  4. Add half a pint of currant jelly, one pint of claret, and a quarter pound of butter, divided into bits and rolled in flour.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

158Calories
1 gProtein
13 gFat
6 gCarbs

Counts 7 of 9 ingredients. The other 2 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 7 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Wine2 tbsp cooking wine (30ml)25
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Clove1 tsp ground (2g)7
Cayenne1 tsp (1.8g)6
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Waternot in our table0
Macenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Home for the Friendless (Chicago, Ill.). 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. See the original page.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Venison (in the method)
Is the main meat, whose lean muscle is cooked slowly to tender, juicy slices.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and with flour helps the surface brown and the sauce thicken.
Claret
Adds acidity and flavour to the basting liquid and the sauce, tenderising the meat.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity, and helps the sauce gloss and balance its richness.
Flour (in the method)
Forms a protective paste that keeps the meat moist, and later helps brown the surface.

The step that matters

Basting the venison in the dripping pan. Basting often keeps the surface moist while the paste protects the meat. Without it, the lean venison can dry out and toughen during the long roast.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wine, butter, clove, nutmeg, pepper):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, butter, clove, nutmeg, pepper. 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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