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To Roast Venison

A roasted haunch of venison seasoned with butter, flour, and salt, wrapped in paper and basted, served with currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Roast Venison

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

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Rub the haunch of venison with butter, then dust with flour and sprinkle with salt.

  3. Butter a sheet of writing paper and lay it over the fat part of the venison.

  4. Cover with two more sheets of paper and tie securely with twine.

Roast and serve

  1. Baste the venison regularly while roasting for about three hours.

  2. Five minutes before serving, remove the paper, dust with flour, and baste with butter.

  3. Allow it to brown nicely, then serve without gravy, alongside melted currant jelly.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Venison + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together443 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

Butter and flour 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
Forms the main cut of meat, which cooks slowly and becomes tender over the roasting time.
Butter
Adds fat that moistens the surface and helps it brown during basting.
Flour
Dusted on the surface, it helps form a golden crust as the meat browns.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and tartness that balances the rich, gamey flavor of the venison.

The step that matters

Basting throughout roasting. Venison is lean, so regular basting with fat keeps the surface moist and prevents it from drying out over the long roast.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Currantthe original
  3. Red currantfits about as well
  4. Lemonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, butter, flour. 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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