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Roast Venison

Roast venison with fat salt pork, butter, salt, pepper, flour, diced pork, boiling water, claret, and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Roast Venison

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 ↓

Roast Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the venison

  1. Wipe the venison.

  2. Remove the dry skin.

  3. Lard the lean sides with the fat salt pork.

  4. Rub the meat all over with soft butter.

  5. Dredge the meat generously with salt, pepper, and flour.

Roast

  1. Place the meat on a rack in a dripping pan.

  2. Sprinkle flour in the pan with the diced pork.

  3. Heat the pan until the flour is brown, about five minutes.

  4. Add enough boiling water to cover the bottom of the pan.

  5. Close the oven door.

  6. After fifteen minutes, begin basting with the pan gravy every ten minutes.

  7. Renew the water as needed.

  8. After one hour, add the claret to the gravy.

  9. Baste with soft butter and flour.

  10. Drain off the fat from the gravy.

  11. Stir in the melted currant jelly without thickening the gravy.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

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

  5. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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
Forms the main body of the roast, cooking to tender, juicy meat over a long roast.
Clear fat salt pork
Larded into the lean sides, it adds fat that keeps the lean meat moist during roasting.
Soft butter
Rubbed over the meat and used for basting, it adds fat for moisture and gentle browning.
Flour
Dredged on the meat and browned in the pan, it helps form a rich, colored gravy.
Claret
Added to the gravy, it contributes acidity and flavor to the sauce.
Currant jelly
Stirred into the gravy, it adds sweetness and a fruity, glossy finish.

The step that matters

Basting the gravy. Basting every ten minutes returns fat and juices to the surface, keeping the meat moist and building flavor in the pan. Renewing the water keeps the gravy from scorching and drying out before the roast is done.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Red currantfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, pork, butter, pepper, 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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