Skip to main content
Main

To Roast Venison

A venison roast prepared with vinegar, spices, salt pork, and claret, then baked and served with a sauce of venison scraps, currant jelly, and claret.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

To Roast Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the venison

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

  2. Rub it with vinegar, red pepper, and coarse sea salt.

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

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

  5. Rub the whole with currant jelly.

  6. Pour claret wine over it.

  7. Let it stand overnight.

Roast

  1. Cover the venison with a paste made of flour and water, half an inch thick.

  2. Cover with soft paper.

  3. Secure with strings.

  4. Place in a dripping pan with some claret, butter, and water.

  5. Baste often.

  6. Take off the paste and paper.

  7. Baste with butter.

  8. Dredge with flour to brown.

Make the sauce

  1. Boil scraps of venison with water, cloves, mace, nutmeg, salt, and cayenne pepper to taste until reduced to a pint.

  2. Skim off the fat.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. 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 saddle
Forms the main meat, which the marinade, paste and roasting cook through and tenderise.
Salt pork
Lardons add fat and moisture inside the lean venison as it roasts.
Flour and water paste
Encases the meat, trapping moisture and protecting it during the long roast.
Claret
Acidic wine in the marinade and pan adds flavour and helps tenderise the meat.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body to the glaze and sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for basting, promoting moisture and golden browning.

The step that matters

Dredge with flour to brown. Flour dusted on the meat browns under dry heat, building color and flavor; if the surface is still wet or the paste is not removed first, it may steam or burn unevenly.

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.

More roasted venison recipes

Haunch 53Saddle 3 See all 37 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes